


Always In Your Shadow

by Arinus



Series: Calista Snape [1]
Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Childhood Trauma, Complete, Death Eaters, Healing, Legilimency, Legilimens, Mental Health Issues, Mentor Severus Snape, Occlumency, Parent Bellatrix Black Lestrange, Parent Severus Snape, Parent-Child Relationship, Possession, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Psychological Trauma, Redemption, Severus Snape Has a Heart
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-06-15
Updated: 2018-06-15
Packaged: 2019-05-23 19:14:44
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 17
Words: 95,510
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14940251
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Arinus/pseuds/Arinus
Summary: After the Dark Lord's fall in 1981, more than one child was lost in the spoils of war. Six-year-old Calista, the daughter of the Dark Lord's most infamous and fanatical follower, Bellatrix Lestrange, has been left in an orphanage by her mother's cousin Sirius Black, following her rescue from a mother that only wanted to twist her to the Dark Lord's purpose.  The  staff at the orphanage consider her both a lost cause and a Squib, but it may take a forgotten, rejected man to save a forgotten, rejected child.For his part, Severus Snape has enough to regret without dwelling on his brief, haunting affair with the Dark Lord's most quixotic servant; but he decides to see, in the aftermath of her arrest, if he can locate her missing daughter. Instead of answers, he finds a haunted, irrevocably damaged child with his eyes and his ghosts, and he knows at once that he cannot leave her where she is.Above all, a realistic Snape's daughter story, as well as an honest depiction of recovery and PTSD, and an in-depth exploration of the mental arts of Legilimency and Occlumency.





	1. PROLOGUE

**Author's Note:**

> AU, though extremely canon-compliant except for the addition of the new character.  
> I pride myself on keeping Severus Snape in character, and his interactions believable.
> 
> TRIGGER WARNING: This story deals with themes of child abuse, Death Eater crimes, and PTSD. It contains flashbacks of violence to/in front of a young child. It is no more graphic than it needs to be, and is necessary to the storyline, but some people may be disturbed by it. There IS redemption/healing for the wounded character(s).
> 
> Cross-posted; this story has been on FFN for several years.

 

_**Prologue** _

Bellatrix Lestrange rubbed her belly subconsciously as she peered down her nose. The woman on the ground beneath her writhed, eyes wild and round. "P-please," he choked, "Have-have mercy...I have done nothing to you."

Bellatrix laughed. "I am not known to be merciful," she crooned, pausing with her hand at the middle of her own belly. She owed nothing to this filthy Muggle bitch, but... perhaps pregnancy was making her soft. "Perhaps... just this once, I can make an exception..."

Relief flooded her blanched features; the sweat-soaked cheeks went slack. Carefully, she propped herself up on her elbows, edging slowly away from Bellatrix.

"Yes, I think I will give you mercy," Bellatrix said, her dark eyes alight. She twisted her wand through her fingers, thoughtfully.

"Th-thank you," the woman said on exhale, and she trembled like a leaf even as she slid further away from Bellatrix; like a cornered animal, she was afraid to make any sudden moves, although the temptation to get away from this clearly unhinged woman was mighty; especially considering the unbelievable pain she'd just been in; she could only hope that this... this witchcraft, whatever it was, that the wild-haired woman had done to her hadn't somehow damaged her permanently. Lord only knew, it had felt as though her bones were being broken apart, like she was being completely unraveled inside.

Bellatrix nodded. In a sudden motion, she aimed the wand purposefully at the young woman again. She opened her mouth.

"What are you doing?" the woman asked, tensely. "You... please, you said you'd have mercy!"

Bellatrix cocked her head. "For a filthy Muggle like you, death is mercy," she said, pleased with herself. She winked conspiratorially. "Especially from me. So...  _Avada Kedavra!_ "

Bellatrix chuckled as the light fled from the woman's round, blue eyes. Well, that was done.

**(¯ˆ·.¸¸.·ˆ¯)**

Bellatrix sat at her kitchen table, wand held loosely in her right hand. It was tempting to speculate on which of her suitors had fathered the child, but finding out was probably not worth the trouble, since she had no intention of sharing it with anyone but the Dark Lord himself.

It was a thing she and Rodolphus had tried for many times over the course of their marriage; not that either of them were particularly tender-hearted, and certainly not for the pitter-patter of little feet or any of that nonsense, but simply because the wizarding race was dwindling. With each generation, the blood was thinning; there were, in the Lestranges' opinion, far too few purebloods remaining. But it had never happened; she hadn't known, at the time, if it was his defect or hers, but they had never been able to produce a child.

It had been hard, when he was killed. Not because of any particular emotional attachment she held, but because he'd been killed by a dirty blood-traitor, one of Alastor Moody's half-blooded Auror prodigies, and Bellatrix had yet to return the favor. Narcissa had been pressing her, of late, to marry Rabastan, but Bellatrix had no intentions of doing so. She had done what was expected of her, and married a pureblooded wizard, once. They hadn't produced a child, and now he was gone. She needed to avenge his death, but that was all she felt she owed him.

The child, though... she felt they'd been on the right track there. And it had come to her, months after Rodolphus had been murdered, that it wasn't too late; was perhaps even better this way. Rodolphus had not been much of a duelist - that was why he'd died. In fact, as she reflected, there was not much to say for him, save that his blood was as pure as her own.

But she was, in her way, a beautiful woman, and she could have her pick of donors, as it were, for her child.

There had been quite a few of them, none of whom were worth her time or attention, but she doled out just enough of it, anyway. If she'd been looking for perfection, she would have remained childless, but she'd had to look at the situation objectively. There were a few in the Dark Lord's inner circles that had talents worth cultivating; a few were excellent duelists, for instance, and one had such a talent for Transfiguration that he had become an Animagus. Then, of course, there was the other one... the half-Mudblood. That had been distasteful, though more than a little fun. More importantly, there was no denying that he was a skilled wizard, and he was close to the Dark Lord, for reasons Bellatrix couldn't fully understand.

Any of them would contribute something useful, and that was the way she had to look at it; it wasn't about the men, or whether she liked any of them. It was, purely and simply, about choosing the ones that would breed something useful into her child, so that the child could be presented to the Dark Lord, the ultimate servant. No one had ever been a Death Eater from birth; it seemed to Bellatrix that if such a child were to exist, it could only be hers.

And if, for some reason, it didn't work out; if the child was dim-witted, if the Dark Lord rejected it, if Bellatrix tired of caring for it - well, then she could raise it as fodder. A willing sacrifice was always a powerful thing, and that was the sum of it, to Bellatrix. The child would be a servant, or the child would be a sacrifice. Perhaps both, in time.

But for now, there was only the swelling of her belly, and the wand she twirled in her fingers. It could tell her now if it was a boy or a girl, but that was of little interest to her, anyway. It could tell her who had fathered the child too, but for that she'd need to cast a paternity spell on both herself and on the male, and she wasn't certain she wanted him, whichever one he was, to know. There were a few of them that might ask her to see the child, even to allow him to help raise it, that might have their own opinions on the child's usefulness, and Bellatrix wanted to keep it all to herself. When it came down to it, she didn't trust any of them to raise it correctly, to stay true to her mission. If you wanted something done right, in Bellatrix's mind, you did it yourself.

**(¯ˆ·.¸¸.·ˆ¯)**

Bellatrix gave birth to a tiny, skinny-limbed girl in the middle of a frigid, bitter March. Her skin was pale, her mouth a thin-lipped pout. Her eyes were as dark and fathomless as an oil slick, or the bottom of a deep well, and the feathery hair atop her head was jet-black, scraggly. Bellatrix called her Calista, because the name had a double meaning; it could refer to a vessel, and it also meant 'most beautiful'.

Bellatrix thought her child was indeed most beautiful; she bore enough of a resemblance to her mother to see she had the Black blood in her veins, and in the child's dark, dark eyes Bella imagined she could already see a devotion to the Dark Lord and his deeds.

Ultimately, it came about much as she had half-expected, though. The Dark Lord had no interest in a baby, no matter how extraordinary Bellatrix claimed it would be.

"Bring her back when she is sixteen, and ready to take the Mark," he had said dismissively, in his cold, high voice.

And that is what Bellatrix resolved to do; but in the meantime, there was no reason that she shouldn't be cultivated, so that she might grow to be as useful as possible. Perhaps she could not take the Mark yet; perhaps she would not, as Bellatrix had envisioned, accompany her mother to Death Eater gatherings during her formative years. But she could be taught along the way - could learn to feel pride in her wizarding blood, and contempt for those that didn't have it, or those that had sullied it through intermarrying or associating with Muggles.

And so, Bellatrix fed the baby from her breast, and recited her bloodline to the child as she did so; she put the babe to sleep with detailed accounts of her own murderous deeds, and during the day she would murmur the importance of blood purity, would describe the noble cause of preserving it.

Calista was a serious, quiet child from the beginning. She never cried much, which was just as well, because Bellatrix had no patience for it. She would look up at her mother with those dark eyes, small mouth set solemnly. When she did cry, Bellatrix would attempt to feed her; if that did not make the child stop crying, then she would simply set the child back in her cradle and ignore her, until her cries faded away into soft gasps.

As a toddler, she was briefly talkative; she'd insert gibberish responses into the pauses in Bellatrix's nighttime rhetoric, punctuating tales of torture and Muggle hunting with nonsense sounds. Bellatrix fancied that it meant the child was interested, perhaps excited to follow in her mother's footsteps. Calista would imitate her mother's voice, too, as she aged, repeating back words and phrases that Bellatrix spoke. Most would say simply that the child was learning to talk, but Bellatrix was convinced that Calista was eager to be just like her mother, in all ways.

Except that, when the girl was three, Bellatrix took her along on one of her Muggle-hunting trips, and it had not at all gone the way she expected. She had cast  _Cruciatus_ , her favorite spell, on a pair of Muggles. When she turned to look at her daughter, the little girl's eyes were wide, but not, as Bellatrix had expected, with admiration or even hunger; they were wide with terror, and tears left shiny, silvery trails down her cheeks. Her mouth was moving. Bellatrix let off the spell, and crouched closer to her daughter to hear what she was saying. The muggles squirmed and gasped, temporarily reprieved.

At first, Bellatrix couldn't decipher the girl's babbling; but then, she heard a string of words. "Mama, no, mama bad!" the little girl pleaded. Bellatrix gripped the girl's wrist, looked into her face.

"Listen to Mama.  _Those_  are the bad people, there." She pointed her wand in their direction, illustratively; the pair flinched, caught mid-rise, hoping to escape while Bellatrix was distracted. "They would take your magic away if they could. Don't pity  _them_."

Calista only continued her childish pleading: "Mama bad! No, no, no!"

Bellatrix turned, refocused. The filth was trying to escape; that would not do, not at all. And yet, she couldn't concentrate with the child's wretched cries assaulting her ears. She flicked her wand carelessly first at one, then the other. " _Avada Kedavra!"_ she intoned once, twice. One after the other, they fell to the ground, dead.

And now, the child was not speaking; Bellatrix turned, and saw that she had closed her eyes, was pressing her hands over them. Her mouth wobbled and her shoulders shuddered, but she wasn't making sounds anymore.

"Look at them," Bellatrix commanded. "Look at what becomes of scum, of filth. They're dead, Calista, as they should be."

She pulled the girl up by the arm, dragged her over to the bodies, wrenched the girl's hands away from her face.

"Look at them," she commanded again, and when the child kept her eyes screwed tightly shut, Bellatrix slapped her face; startled, her eyes flew open. Bellatrix made her look at them for a space of several minutes, roughly turning her face back towards them whenever she tried to look away.

It was the same thing over again, every time Bellatrix brought Calista with her when she was targeting Muggles; the girl would cry, would babble for Bellatrix to stop, would close her eyes tightly, turn her small face away. In response, Bellatrix would slap her, would force her to look. Still, no matter what Bellatrix did, she could not coax the girl to look on with anything but horror.

When Calista was four, Bellatrix thought that perhaps she had been going about it the wrong way; perhaps Calista would learn better by action than by example. After she had subdued her prey, she wrapped her daughter's tiny hand and her own hand both around the wand, pointed it and cast the curse. She wanted Calista to feel the rush of power that she, Bellatrix felt, when she cast a curse, punished the filth; and she wanted to see if Calista could cast yet, for she had seen no signs of magical ability thus far.

At first, the child responded the same way, with horror and revulsion. Eventually, Bellatrix grew frustrated, and her patience wore thin. She had tried to teach the child in a way that she considered gentle, but when that failed, she punished the girl, more and more.

She yelled at her, berated her for not taking pride in her bloodline, for not admiring Bellatrix's work for the cause. She slapped the child when she failed to obey, deprived her of dinner when she cried.

Once, she cast the Cruciatus curse on the child, just for a moment; and then, she took to casting Imperius to force the child into obedience, but even then, Calista would do nothing with the wand whenever Bellatrix thrust it into her hands.

Still, something Bellatrix did must have worked, because she thought the child was coming around at last sometime in her fifth year. She began to cry less; at some point, she nearly stopped altogether, stopped babbling for Bellatrix to stop.

Instead of blind horror, her eyes were placid, distant. And yet, during those times, Bellatrix found her to be more or less unresponsive; true, she'd stopped sobbing and wailing like some Muggle brat, but she wouldn't respond when Bellatrix spoke to her, either. And still, the wand was useless in the child's hands.

Even under the Imperius curse, Calista never made any sort of attempt to cast that Bellatrix could discern; and she knew Imperius worked on the girl, because she'd made her do other things - follow after Bellatrix, repeat her bloodline back to her.

Once, Aurors had shown up in the middle of her fun; she'd had to leave two twisted, crumpled Muggles sobbing and waxy-pale behind with their lives intact, to prevent herself from being apprehended. If the child hadn't been there, she could have finished the job, but one of the Aurors had seen Calista, and very nearly took her way before Bellatrix could snatch her back, and hit the Auror with a full-body bind.

And that was enough of a scare for Bellatrix; Calista was  _hers_ , was her vessel to fill with pride for the Dark Lord's cause, with hatred for Muggles and their ilk. She could not let that investment be taken and squandered… and then she'd had a brilliant idea.

True, the Dark Lord would not Mark Calista until she was sixteen; but that was no reason that  _Bellatrix_  couldn't mark her. Why had she not thought of it earlier? She could ensure that Calista would not be stolen away, and she could teach her a lesson at the same time; perhaps this would even, somehow, awaken her dormant magical potential.

No one but the Dark Lord himself could set the Dark Mark into a person's skin by magic, but Bellatrix thought that if she set the Mark with her own hands, it would forge a special connection between her and the child.

It had been a trying affair, in Bellatrix's mind; the little girl had screamed and squirmed, tried to run away. It had taken a combination of brute force and a number of curses to keep the child within reach, but in the end she'd accomplished what she'd set out to do; she'd Marked the child herself, with her own hands.

Calista changed, after that; when her eyes were not blank, they glittered with malice and resentment. She all but refused to speak, most of the time, and when Bellatrix focused her attention on Calista, the girl nearly always looked back stony-faced. Occasionally, she'd look at her mother with what could only be described as hatred.

In an attempt to re-direct the child's hatred where she felt it belonged, Bellatrix took her Muggle-hunting more and more. Again and again, she placed the wand in the child's hand, willing her, by voice and by curse, to cast along with her. The child never did.

**(¯ˆ·.¸¸.·ˆ¯)**

It was because of her determination to get the girl to cast a curse on a Muggle that she was caught off guard one night, when members of the Order of the Phoenix arrived.

There were four of them there that night, and they had rounded up a family of Muggles for sport. Bellatrix had taken her daughter aside, and apprehended one of the Muggles, a teenage boy.

"Kick him," Bellatrix urged, pointing her wand at Calista, instead of at the Muggle boy; she had the girl under the Imperius curse again - if the girl couldn't, or wouldn't cast a spell, then Bellatrix would make her hurt the filth in other ways. It was the hatred for them that she wanted to cultivate, after all. "Hit him. Bite him."

Under the curse, the girl would have no choice but to obey. Bellatrix licked her lips hungrily, eager to see her daughter inflict pain on the filthy-blooded brat.

And then, as suddenly as that, she had been disarmed; her wand flew from her grasp, and her daughter stumbled, fell to her knees as she was released from the curse.

Bellatrix looked up to see her cousin, Sirius Black, standing but ten paces away, his wand trained on her. Beyond him, she could see her comrades caught up in duels of their own with more of Dumbledore's Muggle-loving cronies.

Sirius had his hand out to catch her wand, but when he registered the forms of the Muggle boy and of the skinny, dark-haired little girl on her knees, his eyes widened in shock and he missed; the wand fell to the ground with a hollow clatter, and rolled across the pavement towards the small girl.

"Unbelieveable," Sirius sneered, disgust lacing his words. "This is a new low, even for you. Children, Bellatrix?"

Bellatrix found her voice; it came out hoarsely, as she stretched her hand towards her daughter, pointed long, white fingers at her.

"Give Mama the wand," she coaxed, "Pick it up, give Mama her wand, now!"

Sirius' eyes swept, in an instant, between mother and child; his eyes looked somehow sad as he registered what he had really stumbled upon, realized this skinny, sad-looking little girl was Bellatrix's own child.

Calista stood, and her dark eyes found her mother's, locked on. Too late, Sirius reacted, went for the wand on the ground, but the little girl was closer. Screwing up her tiny face with rage, Calista kicked the wand, as far away as she could, further from where her mother crouched on the ground. It skittered away from all of them.

Bellatrix howled with rage and lunged for the wand. Sirius aimed a hex at her, but it missed, narrowly. She reached the wand, snatched it up. Sirius readied a Shield Charm, but he needn't have bothered; Bellatrix swing the wand around to her daughter, instead.

"Idiot girl!" she screeched, " _Crucio!_ "

The shrill sound of the child's scream carried up into the air, above the other shouts and cries and battle sounds. She fell to the ground again.

Bellatrix kept the wand trained on the child, shaking it to punctuate her words now and then.

"You  _will_  learn to do as you're told! You will make your Mama proud! You will follow the Dark Lor—," In her rage, Bellatrix had momentarily forgotten about Sirius, who had reacted blindly, tackling her bodily, and sending her sprawling and her wand clattering to the ground again.

"Evil bitch," Sirius growled, now pointing his own wand at the nape of her neck as he pinned her to the ground. "You deserve everything that you would have done to those Muggles… but not here, not now. You've evidently done enough damage to that poor child; I won't make her witness your death tonight, too."

Placing a curse on Bella to temporarily rend her immobile, Sirius stood, limbs shaking with anger and shock. He reached a hand towards the little girl, who was shakily getting up from the ground herself.

"Come here, little one," Sirius said, trying to moderate his anger, "I'll take you somewhere safe, away from  _her_."

The child made no move either towards him or away from him, and Sirius briefly found himself wondering if Bellatrix had managed to damage the child's wits, for she only stared blankly. Behind her, the teenaged Muggle was running, wisely electing to flee the scene while everyone else was distracted.

"Come on," Sirius repeated urgently, the sounds of battle still echoing around them, "This is no place for children."

When the girl still didn't move, he reached forward and grabbed her wrist, pulling her along with him hurriedly. As soon as they were removed from the scene, Sirius disapparated both of them.

**(¯ˆ·.¸¸.·ˆ¯)**

Calista sat still in a chair that was one of several around a large, wooden table, in a cozy, well-lit kitchen. She had been here, in this chair, ever since the tall, black-haired man in the leather jacket had taken her away from the place where her mother was, where they had been torturing Muggles.

He was sitting next to her, in a chair identical to hers. On her other side, a pretty woman with a pregnant belly and long red hair sat. Another black-haired man, this one wearing spectacles and looking very concerned, sat on the woman's other side. On the tabletop, he reached for the woman's hand, held it gently. There was a third man at the table, too. He sat almost directly across from Calista, and studied her with mild brown eyes. He looked the least shaken of of all of them.

Each of the adults had tried to get Calista to speak to them. They'd asked her for her name, how old she was, asked her if she was hurt, or if she was hungry. She hadn't responded to any of them, had simply stared at the tabletop, her gaze as wooden as the table itself.

When none of them could coax a response from her, they started to speak around her instead, in hushed, worried-sounding tones. All of them punctuated their conversation with frequent, concerned glances in her direction.

Except for the brown-eyed man across from her; as far as Calista could tell, though she was trying not to look, he kept his gaze fixed on her. He didn't seem worried, exactly. He looked a little sad, and more than a little perplexed, as if she were a riddle that he almost knew the answer to.

Calista listened to them carefully, although her face remained impassive, her eyes distantly fixed on the surface of the table. She learned their names; the man who had taken her was called Sirius, and he was related to her mother, somehow. She hadn't been sure what to think of him until then; knowing he was her mother's kin made her distrust him immediately.

The woman was Lily, and the man next to her was called James. She gathered that he was her husband, and that Lily was pregnant with their son. She didn't particularly trust any of them, but she did like the way Lily's voice sounded. It was soft, and gentle. It reminded Calista of a warm blanket, or a light summer rain.

The one across from her, who had more or less kept his gaze on her since he'd sat down, was Remus, and he was the quietest one of the group, only venturing to contribute to their conversation occasionally.

"Do you suppose she has tracking spells on her?" James asked uneasily.

"I don't know," Sirius said, "Knowing my cousin, she probably does. I had to take her, though. I couldn't leave her there, not after what Bellatrix was doing…"

"But we can't keep her here," James said urgently, "Bellatrix is going to come looking for her. It's not going to be easy to hide her child from her, we have no idea what kind of spells she's attached to her. It's far too risky, it could lead Voldemort's followers straight to us. She shouldn't be here any more than she should've been with that lot of Death Eaters."

Sirius ran his hand through his black hair in frustration.

"I know, I know! But what was I supposed to do? She was using unforgivable curses on her own child! And if she's Bellatrix's daughter," he nodded towards the small girl, "Then she's related to me, too. It's my responsibility to help her."

Lily leaned over, laid a hand gently on Calista's shoulder. The little girl flinched, and shrank away from Lily's touch. Lily drew her hand back uncertainly. Remus frowned.

"It's all right," Lily said softly, her hand hovering now above the child's shoulder, "Are you hungry?"

The little girl lifted her face to look at Lily; her eyes were utterly unreadable, her face solemn. Lily felt a jolt of recognition somewhere in the back of her mind; she had seen those eyes before, she thought, but where?

The child only looked at her, didn't reply. After a moment, the flash of recognition faded, and Lily only felt her heart breaking at the sight of those cold, alien eyes. She had never seen a child look so utterly lost and alone, and she thought she would rather die than see that look in her own child eyes, even for an instant.

Disheartened, she tore her eyes away from the little girl's, looked instead at each of the men in turn, resting them on James eventually.

"No offense meant, Sirius," James said hesitantly. Calista turned her face stonily to the table once more. "But now that she's here… Well, how do you know she isn't going to report to her mother the things she's seen here? It might make finding us a lot easier."

Sirius rolled his eyes.

"Come on, she's only a little child. And I don't think Mum is her favorite person just now…"

He glanced at the child for confirmation, but it was as if he had said nothing, for all the acknowledgement she offered.

"Something's wrong with her," Lily said softly, reaching her hand out again, this time brushing the girl's forehead so gently that the child didn't even flinch, this time. "I think she might be ill. It's unnatural for a child to be so quiet and unresponsive."

Remus furrowed his brow and nodded a bit, as if he had been thinking the same thing. James looked uncomfortable, tightening his hold on his wife's hand, and Sirius just shrugged.

"I wouldn't exactly be the life of the party either, after living with Bellatrix. Give her a few days, I'm sure she'll come around."

Despite his words, Lily was still uneasy. Perhaps it was a mother-to-be's intuition, but she sensed there was more to what troubled the little girl than just what she had seen tonight.

The debate had gone on long into the night, but Calista didn't hear it all. When her face split into a sudden, wide yawn, Lily had glanced up at a clock on the wall, and coaxed Calista to a comfortable sofa in the next room, and settling a soft blanket over her. At some point, while the conversation droned on in the kitchen over what to do with her, she fell into an uneasy sleep.

The next morning, Calista sat at the wooden table again, as the breakfast dishes were cleared away. She had picked at the food they set in front of her, wary and too nervous to eat much. Now, while Lily washed the dishes with magic, Calista started and gasped when a sharp rap came at the front door of the home.

Lily turned at the sound, as James answered the door. Lily's gaze found the little girl, saw a brief flash of fear in them. "It's all right, dove," Lily said, "Albus is a friend. He's going to help us keep you safe."

For several moments, Calista could hear a hushed conversation going on the sitting-room where she had slept badly on the sofa. She couldn't make out most of it, but she heard her mother's name mentioned, and she could make out three distinct voices.

A tall, older-looking man in purple robes, with a long silver beard and head of hair to match, strode into the room, James and Sirius at his heels. Brilliant blue eyes took in the tiny girl sitting at the freshly scrubbed table.

"Ah," he said, and for a moment, that was all he said. He looked at her intently, much as Remus had the previous night, as though he were trying to figure something out. Sirius stepped into the kitchen as well, offered the man more information.

"She hasn't spoken to any of us. Not a word. I'm not sure if she can."

The man stepped closer, and eased himself into the chair beside Calista's, where Sirius had sat last night.

"Hello, there," he said, his voice pitched pleasantly. "I'd like to talk to you for a few minutes. My name is Albus Dumbledore; might I have yours?"

He watched her carefully; it was slight, but her eyes flicked towards him when she heard his name. Predictably, she held her silence.

"Ah, I see you've heard of me. I'm at a loss, though, because I don't know what your name is, and I'm afraid you may have heard some very one-sided things about me. I'd like to set the record straight, if you'll let me."

Calista redoubled her efforts to stare noncommittally at the table. Dumbledore's sharp eyes took in the way her shoulders were tensed, her ears perked.

"Well, firstly, I want you to know that neither myself, nor any other person in this house, is going to hurt you. You're quite safe here; there are a number of very strong protective spells around this house, and no one can get in unless myself, James, or Lily invites them in, which we have no intention of doing for anyone that would cause harm to any person in this house, yourself included. I hope, knowing that, that you'll feel comfortable enough to speak to us."

Silence from the child. The clock on the far wall tick-tocked a smooth rhythm across the kitchen.

"Of course, no one is going to force you to do or say anything, so although I hope you'll speak to us, it's certainly within your rights to keep staring at this lovely table, if that's what you wish to do."

Her eyes flicked towards him again; something in the clarity, the directness, of his gaze, made her lift her head.

"Is there anything at all you'd like us to know?" Dumbledore asked the child gently, "Your name, perhaps, or even what you like to eat for breakfast? Anything at all?"

The child blinked, and shook her head,  _no_ , almost imperceptibly. Albus sat beside her a moment longer, but she tilted her head down once more, pressed her lips together tightly.

He stood, turned to face Sirius and James. "I won't say this doesn't put us in an uncomfortable predicament, but I believe rescuing her from her mother was, in this case, necessary. I wish you had brought her to Hogwarts last night, immediately. We may have had additional options, if she'd gone there, first. For now, she has to stay here. I don't know of a tracking spell that can breach the charms we have around this house, but if she takes one step outside of their boundaries, she'll be traceable once more."

Dumbledore glanced at the girl again, looking all at once terribly sad and a great deal older. "I hope that she will learn to trust us enough to tell us her name, but until then, perhaps we should choose one to call her by."

"So you believe she can speak, then?" Lily asked earnestly.

"I do believe so, yes," Dumbledore said, "I think she's terribly frightened, and she's perhaps found that silence has served her well in frightening situations."

Shortly after that, Dumbledore left, and Sirius soon after that. The house must have belonged to Lily and James, because they stayed. Sometime in the afternoon, Lily gave the little girl some sheets of paper and a quill.

"I thought perhaps you'd like to draw a picture," she told the girl softly, "Or maybe you can write your name down for us. Do you know your letters yet?"

Calista raised her head and scowled, quill in hand. Lily laughed. "All right, I guess you do. Will you write your name down?"

Calista set the quill down, pushed the paper away from herself, and folded her arms defiantly.

Lily frowned, and sighed. She supposed the hostility was an improvement on her complete unresponsiveness the night before. "Well… those are yours, if you feel like writing or drawing anything."

She'd been wearing a plain black garment and a thin jacket when Sirius had taken her away; Lily had come home earlier that afternoon with a few new sets of clothes for her, Muggle clothes - trousers and blouses, and a nightdress, and then had thrown her old ones away. She'd searched the pocket of the dress, and found the one thing that Calista always kept with her: a dog-eared, ratty little book. Lily had flipped through the pages, but all of them were blank. She left the book on the table; later, it had disappeared.

Later, Calista sat beside the far end of the sofa, hidden from view of most of the downstairs. She'd taken the quill, but left the blank piece of paper on the table She withdrew the little book from the pocket of her new trousers. She scribbled in it furiously, pausing now and then to perk her ears for the sound of anyone approaching.

Days passed, and they were no closer to learning her name; Lily felt like she was housing a ghost, for Calista had a habit of disappearing as soon as someone noticed her. If Calista sat at the table, and someone entered the room, she'd leave. If she was sitting on the sofa and someone else made to sit down, the child would bolt. It was a small house, but somehow the little girl always found a place to hide.

The Potters had company beyond those that had been there the night Sirius had taken her away. Albus Dumbledore came once more, and there was, a handful of times, a short, pudgy, pale-faced fellow. Others came only once or twice, but as Lily's pregnancy really began to show, the visitors were fewer and fewer. Calista, for her part, took to hiding whenever a rap came at the door.

As Lily's pregnancy progressed, she kept to the house most of the time, but her attempts to engage the child in conversation were as fruitless as ever. James was usually gone from morning until mid-evening, and when he came home, Calista voided him, too. Sirius stopped in occasionally - once or twice, he'd brought sweets to try and entice the little girl with, but she only eyed him warily and backed out of the room.

Remus, though. He visited the house frequently; sometimes, he stayed for a few days on end, disappeared at dusk one day, and came back in the early morning hours of the next day. During these times, he always seemed to the child to be ill. He was pale and visibly weakened; perhaps this was why he frightened her marginally less than the rest of them.

Once, she'd emerged from one of her hiding places to find him sitting on the sofa, engrossed in a book. His skin was as pale as ever, and he looked tired. Calista froze, eyeing him warily for several silent minutes; he appeared to be entirely absorbed by his book, but there was quite a long space of time where he didn't turn any pages.

Calista crept closer, skirting the coffee table carefully, and perched gingerly on the opposite end of the sofa; her muscles were tense, prepared to bolt again at a moment's notice.

When neither of them moved for a moment, she craned her neck forward, tilted her head to read the title on the spine of the book. She could read the letters, but she didn't know all the words. She made out "Forest", wasn't sure of the rest. She leaned back, still tilting her head in his direction; now she was trying to see the pages. There were a lot of tiny words, and a large, colorful picture. She inched closer, squinting at the picture. It looked a bit like a…

"It's a unicorn," Remus said, very softly. His voice was low, hoarse. The girl started, tensed again. He turned the book slowly and carefully in her direction. "This book is about magical creatures that live in the forest. Most of the pictures are photographs, but no one's ever managed to photograph a unicorn, so this one's just an illustration."

Her eyes darted between the book and his face; he could see that she was poised to disappear again. He kept his own expression mild to the point of appearing disinterested. She exhaled, and relaxed just the tiniest bit. She tilted her head again, studying the picture.

"Would you like me to read the part about unicorns aloud?" he ventured.

It was like throwing a shade over her eyes; they went blank, distant. She launched herself off the sofa, and disappeared into the kitchen. Remus sighed, rubbed his eyes with one hand, still balancing the book in the other.

The next time he was reading when the child carefully approached, he didn't look at her, didn't ask her if he wanted to read aloud; he simply started to do so, matter-of-factly, in a soft, barely-there voice. From the corner of his eye, he saw her tense when he began speaking; but as he continued, never turning his face away from the book, she relaxed again, even, after a time, curling up against the arm of the couch, legs drawn up under her.

As days turned into weeks, this became something of a pattern; while Remus read aloud, she would sit at the furthest end of the sofa, so long as he didn't pay too much attention to her, at least not overtly. A few times, he tried to speak to her, but it was tricky, knowing how far he could go before she'd bolt. More than once he'd gotten it wrong, and they'd had to begin the pattern anew.

Once, in the days after the third full moon since Calista had been with the Potters, and shortly after Lily's son Harry had been born, he had an idea. He brought a book that contained many examples of alphabets drawn in different styles of calligraphy, and a brief history of each style..

Lily was upstairs with baby Harry; James wasn't home. Remus, too worn and sickly from the night before to do much beyond sitting on that very sofa and reading, settled down, and began to read aloud in his usual quiet way. Sure enough, a tiny dark-haired form materialized in the doorway, crept over to the sofa, sat at the other end.

He read for a few minutes after she'd settled herself. Then, he turned the pages towards her, like he had done with the unicorn picture the first time. He opened to a spread of the alphabet in a very simple calligraphic hand, and pointed one finger to the letter 'R'. "My name's spelled this way," he said, and moved his finger next to 'E', then 'M', 'U', and finally, 'S'. "Remus," he told her, even though of course she'd already known that.

"Do you see any of the letters in your name here?" He carefully maintained a neutral expression, as though perhaps he didn't really care which letters were in her name; perhaps he was only being polite. She tensed, and he thought she would bolt again, but then she stretched one skinny arm out, tentatively. It hovered a few inches from the page; she glanced at his face, and he turned his face back towards the page, feigning utter disinterest in her response. Her finger came down, pointed at the letter 'C'.

A cry filled the house suddenly, as Harry woke from a nap, hungry. The little girl fled.

He tried the alphabet book again, but she never pointed out any other letters; the third time he tried, she disappeared, and it seemed that 'C' was all she was willing to tell him. It was Lily's idea to call her Chloe after that, and the girl didn't seem to mind it particularly, so that was what they began to refer to her as.

None of them ever could could coax a word out of the child, and gradually, they simply accepted that, for whatever reason, she was effectively mute. The more time passed, the more often she'd respond to Lily or Remus with a nod  _yes_  or  _no_. A handful of times, Remus even coaxed a ghost of a smile from her, usually when he had found something to read to her that was amusing for a little girl.

He began bringing children's books, tales of adventure without particularly frightening parts; if she thought it was a suspicious change from his scholarly tomes, she certainly didn't say so.

As the months passed, Harry grew, and his parents enjoyed bonding with him. Lily tried, unsuccessfully, to encourage Calista to play with the baby, hoping it would draw the child out, but the girl they called Chloe never showed much interest,

And then came a cold autumn night; the wind howled about the eaves of the house, and fat raindrops splashed intermittently against the windows.A rap came at the door; one that had Lily and James more on edge than it did even flighty 'Chloe'.

There were only the four of them there that night; Lily, James, baby Harry, and Bellatrix's girl. The relief in James was palpable when he looked through the window of the front door, and opened it to a trio of familiar faces: Albus Dumbledore, flanked by Sirius Black and the short, pudgy man that had visited their house a few times before.

"It's time," Dumbledore said, without preamble, as James closed the front door behind them. Beads of rain sparkled in his silvery beard. "The charms we have here are no longer sufficient. We need to act quickly."

His eyes swept the room, took in 'Chloe' as she slunk away from them towards the kitchen.

"I cannot say for a certainty that whatever spells Bellatrix has cast on her child won't interfere. Sirius is going to take her away, tonight, to somewhere I believe she will be safe."

Lily was halfway down the stairs, Harry in her arms. "Albus, what-" she began, but Dumbledore interrupted her.

"We'll have a few moments to discuss this before we begin." again, his eyes swept to the child; the implication was clear. In case he was wrong, in case wherever Sirius took the child was not safe, it would be unwise to give the girl any information that Bellatrix could coax or force out of her. "Sirius?" he prodded.

Sirius nodded, stepped towards the little girl. She shied away, backed further into the kitchen, but he was taller; he reached her easily, picked her up. set her against his shoulder.

He felt her entire body stiffen, and then begin to tremble violently, as he carried her towards the front door. "Shhh, it's okay," he said, marveling at how light she felt; he thought she barely weighed more than Harry. "We're going somewhere safe."

Except, he thought, as he gritted his teeth, loading her into the sidecar of his flying motorbike, he wasn't certain that was true. The location of the orphanage Dumbledore had found was under similar protective charms to those that surrounded the Potter's home in Godric's Hollow, true. But getting her there before Bellatrix could track her down was another thing entirely.

He climbed astride the bike, glanced at the child once more as they took off into the cold, damp night; she still trembled, her arms wrapped around herself tightly. Her eyes were round with terror.  _Not a fan of flying, then_ , he thought, as he accelerated through the air.

In record time, they'd landed at the destination. His eyes darted around in the darkness while he unloaded the girl, half-expecting Bellatrix to materialize from nowhere. They were close, now; if Bellatrix did appear, he would try to fend her off, bid the child to run towards the front doors of the orphanage…

She wouldn't let him pick her up again; her body went absolutely rigid, except for her arms and hands; they clawed at him wildly as he lifted her from the sidecar. He sucked in a breath as her fingernails scraped the soft skin under his eye. "Shit," he breathed, "I'm trying to  _help_  you." He settled for gripping her arm at the elbow, nearly dragged her into the building.

And so, as the Potters went under the Fidelius charm back in Godric's Hollow, 'Chloe Smith' was registered at Francis House Orphanage. As for the man who had taken her there; he would be rotting in a cell in Azkaban before the scratches from the girl's fingernails had quite faded away.

**(¯ˆ·.¸¸.·ˆ¯)**

_**THREE MONTHS LATER** _

Precisely the day after Bellatrix Lestrange had been arrested and thrown immediately into Azkaban for her part in torturing Frank and Alice Longbottom. Headmaster Albus Dumbledore was visited in his office by the new Potions professor.

Dumbledore braced himself; Severus Snape had come to see him several times since the Potters had been murdered, and not one of those conversations had been pleasant.

"There's something I need to know," the young man said, And dumbledore sensed that the topic of this discussion would be different. "It concerns the Order, and information you have that I was not privy to as a double agent."

"There are some things in which I am completely bound to secrecy, Severus, but I will help you if I can. You have certainly earned that."

Dumbledore flicked his light blue eyes up to the sallow-skinned man, wondering what he wanted to know.

"Two years ago, Bellatrix Lestrange's daughter was kidnapped by Sirius Black. Bellatrix said she was tracked, with multiple spells, but never found. What happened to her? Is she…?"

"If you'd hoped to reunite the child with her mother, you've waited an awfully long time to ask me if I know her whereabouts," Dumbledore commented, noncommittally.

"I know what happened yesterday," Severus said simply.

There was a pause, before Dumbledore asked, "Why, exactly, are you asking after her now, then?"

"Is she alive?" Severus countered.

For an awkwardly long moment, Severus thought the older man wouldn't answer. Then:

"She is alive."

"Where is she?"

"You'll pardon an old man's curiosity, Severus, but I would truly like to know why you have taken such a sudden interest in this child."

Severus met the Headmaster's gaze directly. "I can swear to you that I wish the child no harm, but I would much prefer to keep my reasons to myself right now."

They locked eyes for a moment; Severus was sure Dumbledore was going to refuse to tell him. and then, the older man was writing something down.

He handed the sheet of paper to Severus, who looked down at the Headmaster's loopy cursive. It contained an address, and only two other lines of text:

_Francis House Orphanage_

_Chloe Smith_

The next day, Severus travelled to the address that Dumbledore had given him. He found a squat stone building, with an engraved sign out front that read "Francis House Orphanage - Est. 1977 as a safe place for children"

It looked like a very ordinary building as he approached it, but when he stepped inside the front door, he felt a rush of warmth as he passed through several layers of protective barriers.

There was a reception desk immediately as he walked in. All of the people working behind it were wearing Muggle clothing. Severus felt suddenly out of place in his black wizarding robes.

A tall, wiry young woman, perhaps Severus' own age, greeted him. She had a head of curly, reddish-orange hair, and a rather grating voice. If she was his age, she had not gone to Hogwarts; he was sure he had never seen her before.

"Hello, welcome to Francis House. I'm Emma. You'll have to sign in; are you here for a visit, or just for information?"

"I'm not sure yet," he said, wondering when someone was going to mention his unusual attire, "I'm looking for a child, a girl. I'm told she was registered here as Chloe Smith. She should have black hair, and she'd be about six years old."

And that, he realized, amounted to nearly everything he knew about the girl. He had only seen glimpses of her, from far away; he didn't think he had ever seen her face. And yet, still, he had wondered about her in the back of his mind. There were any number of people who could have fathered the girl; in fact, having been with Bellatrix only a small handful of times, the odds were against it being him. But he had to know for a certainty, one way or the other.

Emma was nodding. "You're looking for Chloe? She's… hm." Her eyes flicked over him, taking in his clothing. She lowered her voice, conspiratorially. "You do know that most of the children here are Muggles, yes?"

"I was beginning to gather that," he replied, looking at the young woman more thoroughly now that he realized she wasn't one; ah, yes. He could see the outline of her wand in her dress pocket, now.

"Yes… well… we don't test them, mind you. But she was registered as magical-blooded when she was dropped off, and we tried to bunk her with others who were registered the same way, but… there's been a spate of adoptions since You-Know-Who fell."

Severus tried not to feel disappointed; the odds she were his had never been very high in the first place; he might be worrying about some brat of Mulciber's…

"She's been adopted?" Severus asked, keeping his voice neutral.

"Er, no," Emma said, "She hasn't, but all of the other magical-blooded children close to her age have been… we didn't feel it would be right to bunk her with teenagers, so she's in the Muggle ward. You can keep your robes if you want, but be warned, most of the children will probably laugh at you."

"I think I can handle that," Severus said drily, penning his name in the sign-in book.

Emma nodded, and held her hand out. "No wands in the Muggle ward," she said, "Not even mine. I'll lock it up while we go through."

Reluctantly, Severus handed her his wand. True to her word, she locked both his wand and her own in a wall safe behind the counter. She came round and opened a door to the left of the reception desk, beckoned him to follow.

"We… used to be a wizarding orphanage only, but there were so many Muggle children displaced by the war…" Emma told him softly, before they entered the ward.

They walked past a common room, where children of all ages played with a scattering of toys; he scanned them, looking for a child that could possibly be the one.

They went down a few narrow hallways, with doors lining both sides of every hall. Some of the doors were were open, and beyond them he made out small, dim rooms that held four bunks each. On the closed doors, he could see nameplates on the doors; he noted that boys' names were on the right side of the hallway, girls' names on the left. Emma drew up to the very last door on the left. There were three names on this door: Allison, Chloe, and Jessica.

Emma tapped on this door, and entered without waiting for a reply.

The room was empty but for two girls, Severus saw. One was fair-haired and the other had dingy mouse-brown hair, and both were bent over something in the far corner of the room, between a set of bunks and the wall. They giggled, and something in it sounded mean.

"Jessica, Allison," Emma admonished, "I hope you're playing nice. Some children have a difficult time adjusting.

Severus could tell that this last part had been spoken more for him than the two little girls, who both looked up furtively and stifled further giggles. It was only when the lighter-haired of the two girls stood up that he noticed the fistful of dark hair she held onto, and quickly dropped as she met Emma's gaze, and he slowly realized that there was indeed another child in the room.

In the corner, where the girls had been hunched over, was a smaller, slighter form whose face was obscured by masses of tangled, lank-looking black hair.

The mousy-haired girl aimed a swift, small kick at the dark-haired girl before she and her friend scurried around Emma and out of the room, eyes lit with mischief.

Emma sent a frustrated look after the pair, but entered the room, beckoning Severus to follow.

"Chloe!" she said with false brightness, and Severus could tell, somehow, that Emma was not overly fond of little, dark-haired 'Chloe'.

"You have a visitor, Chloe. His name is Mr. Snape." Emma looked back at him again. and said something else, but he had stopped listening as he took in the appearance of the little girl crouched before them.

She was small and thin, and her skin was so pale it appeared to have an almost yellowish tint to it. He couldn't see her face, because it was obscured beneath a mass of tangled, greasy hair. Clearly, this girl wasn't the picture of perfect hygiene, and Emma seemed to notice this as well.

"We only insist on weekly bathing," Emma was saying now, "Other than that, we let the children settle into their own rhythm. We… normally, we comb the girls' hair, but Chloe is still, er,  _flighty_. She won't let us get very close, most of the time."

At this, the child lifted her face, and glared at Emma with an expression that was nothing short of scathing. Perhaps it was this expression that made the impression of the girl jolt Severus' brain the way it did, or perhaps he had known all along what he would see in the child's face; after all, he had been wondering for six long years something that Bellatrix would refuse to discuss with anyone.

Of course, it could have been one of any number of men; and of course, he had only been involved with her for a short time. It was a time where he had been lonely, and hurting, and broken, and Bellatrix… well, if the rumors he'd heard after the fact were true, then Bellatrix had been handpicking the men she'd taken to her bed on the basis of the talents they might contribute to her child; he supposed he should have taken it as a compliment. At the time he had thought... well, it didn't matter what he had thought. It was done now.

Now, looking at the girl before him, he knew exactly why Bellatrix had refused to let him or anyone else in the Dark Lord's inner circle spend any real amount of time with the child; it couldn't have taken any of them long to figure out, once they had really looked at her...

The girl's face was thin and angular, her cheekbones jutting outwards in much the same way her mother's did. Her nose was narrow, and a little too long for her face. Her mouth was a thin-lipped scowl, and her hair hung in lank tangles.

She was by no means pretty, but she was striking; it was the eyes. They were so dark that they didn't have a discernible color, and as he watched, a fascinating transformation took place behind them.

At first, she'd glared icily at Emma, and he'd seen himself in her immediately; then, when she realized Emma had brought a stranger into the room, those dark eyes had gone suddenly blank, perfect mirrors of his own midnight eyes.

Severus only looked at them for a few seconds, before the girl leapt up; in one hand, she held a small, dog-eared, softcover book. The other went quickly into motion, picking up loose sheets of paper that were scattered around her on the floor, and stuffing them hastily back into the book.

Emma rolled her eyes, addressing Severus again. "That ratty book," she sighed, "It's nothing but blank pages, and it's filthy. We've taken it away at least a hundred times, but somehow she always gets it back. We tried giving her some picture books to read instead, but… I'm not sure that she can make much sense of them. I'm not sure how much sense she makes of much of anything."

At this, the little girl lifted her chin, and aimed such a poisonous glare at curly-haired Emma that Severus himself wanted to recoil from it; he wondered how, in Merlin's name, Emma could think that the girl couldn't understand her.

"I want to adopt her," Severus found himself saying. The little girl's eyes went blank again, but he noticed she clutched the book tightly to her chest. "She can keep her book," he added, watching her carefully. She eyed him balefully, as if challenging him to change his mind.

Emma blinked twice. "You do?" She shook her head slightly, plastered a smile on her face. "Er, of course. That's lovely. We'll have to run a background check, and there's the home inspection… as I said, we've been quite busy, so that might cause a bit of a slowdown. If all goes well, she can go home with you in four to six weeks."

"And if it turns out I'm related to her by blood? Is the process any different?"

"Unless the person or persons wishing to adopt are the godparents, then the process is still the same, I'm afraid."

Emma's face fell; she really did look as if she wished it would be simpler to get the child off her hands.

"I'll go you one better," Severus said, marveling inwardly; what was going on here? He had come only to look, to satisfy his curiosity, and perhaps to ensure her safety and well-being as best he could. "I'm her father. You can run whatever tests you need to to verify that."

Well. Ensuring her safety, her well-being? That was precisely what he was doing, when it came down to it.

Emma didn't bother trying to hide her surprise; she mumbled something about having to check with a manager, and brushed past him. For a few minutes, he was left alone in the room with the hostile little girl; he doubted it was protocol, but then, Emma hadn't struck him as being particularly observant.

He looked at the child again. "Chloe," he mused, and he would have sworn that he had seen derision in those dark eyes. "No," he said, "I don't think name that suits you. I think you're more of a…"

He paused, for dramatic effect more than anything else; he knew the girl's name, had known it all along, since the day Bellatrix had announced her birth to the Dark Lord in front of him nearly six whole years ago.

"Calista," he said softly, with a note of finality. Her little jaw dropped, and a keen interest filled those eyes now. He suspected it had been some time since anyone had called her by her real name.

Emma came breezing back in just then, with an older, heavyset woman she introduced as Margaret. There was a lot of paperwork to be done, and Margaret wanted both a wizarding and a Muggle paternity test run, although, since they used magic to speed up the results of the Muggle paternity test, he didn't quite see the point in running both.

For the tests, Emma led them into an examination room that was on the wizarding side of the building; she took her own wand, and returned Severus', once they had entered the wizarding ward.

For the Muggle test, they had to scrape the inside of both of their cheeks, and compare what they found for compatible genetic material. For the wizarding test, they had to cast a particular incantation on the child, then point the wand at him. If green sparks shot from the wand, he was her father. If the sparks were red, he wasn't.

It all seemed very mundane to Severus, which was why he furrowed his brow, perplexed, when they sent in four people to perform the tests.

And then, when they drew close, he understood why. When they approached the child to collect the physical sample, her body tensed as if she were going to bolt. When two of them held her shoulders in place, she flinched away from them, and again when they asked her to open her mouth and reached in to scrape a sample. From across the room, he could see her trembling forcefully, though not much of her fear was evident in her eyes; they were blank, empty, as the sample was taken.

After that was done, three of the staff left the room, leaving only Emma to perform the wizarding test. Severus exhaled, glad that whatever had scared the girl so badly was done.

Except, they were all quite wrong to feel relief. As soon as Emma had drawn her wand and pointed it at the child, she  _did_  bolt from the room; out in the hall, she ran smack into two of the others that had just left the room.

"Easy," the woman murmured, steering the girl back into the room. The man followed, and blocked the doorway with his frame so she couldn't run again.

"This won't hurt, either," Emma reassured her, "It only takes a minute, and then you're all done, okay?" The other woman still had the little girl's shoulder; she tightened her grip, as Emma raised the wand again.

Predictably, the girl tried to bolt again, but this time they were ready, and both the man and woman that had held her for the last test gripped her arms again; but it was like the child suddenly became a wild creature; she kicked and scratched at them blindly. Her eyes went round and wide.

Before he realized what he was doing, Severus had drawn his own wand.

" _Expelliarmus!"_ he had bellowed, disarming Emma; all of them had looked at him, shocked; amazingly, the two holding the child managed to keep a grip on her.

Emma's jaw dropped. "I wasn't hurting her," she said, dumbfounded. Her hand was still raised, poised to cast the spell.

"Obviously, she doesn't know that," Severus said evenly, though he felt anything but even-tempered. "Look at her; she's terrified. Forget the tests. We'll do the background checks and everything else, and I'll wait to take her home." His eyes darted to the pair holding the child. "For Merlin's sake, would you let her go?"

They did; and promptly, she had run from the room; but the door out of the magical ward was spell-locked, so she couldn't go back to her room. She ran to the exit of the ward, and when she realised she couldn't get out, pressed her back to the wall next to the door, so no one could approach her by surprise. She eyed them warily as they came down the hall.

Margaret came into the ward, then; the girl tried to slip past her while the door was open, but wasn't fast enough, this time. Margaret only glanced at her, however, and then motioned the rest of the group back down the hall in the direction they'd come from.

She pulled Emma and one of the medical staff aside, and murmured with them in low voices; Severus caught bits and pieces of what they were saying, but most of his attention was on the child at the other end of the hall. Merlin's beard. was that…? It was. She had managed, through the entire ordeal, to keep her little book, and she withdrew it from her pocket and clutched it now, like a security blanket.

"Mr. Snape?"

He turned. It was Margaret. "We've decided to make an exception to our policy. We've got the sample we need for the Muggle paternity test, and we're going to go ahead and run that test, and speed the results along with magic. If it's positive, you can take her home today. if you haven't changed your mind."

He could read the older woman's face plain as day; she was afraid that he had changed his mind after the girl's wild display; he could tell as well that Margaret dearly wanted to be rid of the child. He sensed that this wasn't the first time Calista had thrown the staff into a fit of exasperation.

He turned to look at the little girl again. She was like a caged animal, her eyes wary and untrusting, tiny body tensed for flight. He recalled the way her dark hair had been caught up in another little girl's fist when he had entered the room, the way she'd clutched at the pages that had undoubtedly been torn from her little book by the other girls out of spite. From a dozen paces away, he could see the fear in her eyes; but he remembered the careful blankness he'd seen as well, and the flash of interest when he'd known her true name.

"Mr. Snape?"

He returned his gaze to Margaret, who, along with everyone else in this room, clearly believed the child to be a lost cause, little more than a liability. He could read it in all of their faces. Could none of them see what he already did, in the space of less than an hour?

"I haven't changed my mind," he said. loudly. He knew his words would carry to the other end of the hall, where the little girl still pressed her back to the wall.

The test took another hour to process, during which time someone had gathered the rest of the child's meagre belongings while Severus filled out the required paperwork. There was a form in the packet to order a name change if he wanted, which the orphanage would forward to the proper record-keepers.

He printed 'Calista' in the first box, for her given name. He looked at the surname box for the space of several minutes. He could give her back her true name, the one she'd been born with… perhaps that was what she would want. She clearly didn't like being called 'Chloe'... but Bellatrix and her brother-in-law had just been sentenced to Azkaban in a very public non-trial, and the name "Lestrange" was plastered all over the wizarding papers.

Decisively, he lowered his quill to the page. 'Snape', he printed in the surname box, with dark, solid strokes.

Ten minutes after he had finished all of the paperwork, Emma and Margaret returned to the lobby, steering the flighty little girl ahead of them. As soon as they'd come through the door, she jerked herself away from Emma's grasp, cast her one final resentful glare. Margaret handed the child a very small, nearly empty-looking bag.

"The test came back a match," Margaret said, visibly relieved. "She's all yours. We'll file all the paperwork on Monday."

Emma offered him a pitying smile. "Congratulations," she said, and somehow he didn't think that was what she'd really meant.

Outside, on the sidewalk in front of the orphanage, Severus looked down at the little girl again. What was he supposed to do now? How was he even supposed to get her home? Ah, but not home - he had classes to teach tomorrow. He didn't know very much about children, but he was fairly certain you couldn't leave them by themselves all day, hundreds of miles from parental supervision.

He had often thought about trying to find the little girl, especially once he'd heard that she'd been taken from her mother. He had speculated that he would be able to tell, somehow, just by looking at her, if he had fathered her. Both of these things had just happened; but that was as far as he had ever gone in his mind. He'd never considered what would happen if he  _did_  find her, and if she  _was_  his.

She wasn't going to be much help, he could see that already. She stared back at him stonily, clutching her book in one hand and her meagre little bag of clothing in the other. He didn't quite trust that she'd follow him if he began walking.

He didn't want to try to pick her up, not after the reaction he'd seen when the medical staff had tried to hold onto her. How could he even get her back to Hogwarts without terrifying her further?

"I don't suppose you've been Apparated before?" he asked her. He didn't really expect a response. She surprised him by stepping towards him; she pushed her little book deep inside the pocket of her trousers, and brought her now-free hand up, curling her small, warm fingers around his wrist.

He glanced around the street to ensure no one was walking by, then drew his wand, and Apparated them as close to Hogwarts as he could.

She kept her fingers tightly around his wrist, until an instant after they'd appeared several dozen metres in front of the main Hogwarts gate. If he'd hoped that her latching on to his wrist was a positive indicator that she might actually trust him a bit, she'd dashed that notion by quickly releasing them as soon as they'd landed, and backing several paces away from him. Severus suspected very strongly that she'd only meant to avoid being splinched by gripping his wrist so tightly.

"We'll have to walk up the castle," he told her, "We can't apparate inside."

She didn't show any sign that she'd even heard him, but when he began walking towards the gate, she followed.

"Welcome to Hogwarts," he said, as he opened the gate with his wand.


	2. "I don't see that I have any choice but to allow it."

Severus knew his first stop had to be to Dumbledore; he had no idea if the Headmaster would even allow her to live with him at Hogwarts. So much for keeping his reasons for wondering about Bellatrix's daughter private - it seemed unbelievable that it had been only yesterday that he'd gone to Dumbledore to ask about her.

Calista trailed several paces behind him, still clutching her belongings. Her head turned this way and that way, taking in the expanses of the Hogwarts grounds as they walked. When they approached the front door of the castle, she stopped in her tracks and tilted her head back, taking in the enormity of the structure.

Severus allowed a small smile. He remembered feeling much the same when he had seen Hogwarts for the first time. "We'll take a walk around the grounds some day soon," he said, looking back at her. "There's a lot to see."

Hastily, she lowered her gaze, staring straight ahead, affecting a disinterested expression.

Severus pulled open the front doors; he could hear a din of noise coming from the Great Hall, and realised it must be dinnertime. That was good, he thought, with any luck they could avoid being caught in the press of students that usually crowded the corridors between classes.

Dumbledore wasn't in his office. Severus supposed he was still eating dinner himself, and elected to wait with the little girl in the corridor outside his office door. Again, once they had come to a stop, she distanced herself from him, slumping behind the gargoyle statue, as if she expected Severus to forget she was there if he couldn't directly set his eyes on her.

Presently, Dumbledore arrived in the corridor, heading towards them. "Hello, Severus," he said pleasantly. "To what do I owe this pleasure?"

Severus glanced back at the gargoyle statue, and the figure hiding behind it. "Can we discuss something in your office?"

"Of course," Dumbledore followed Severus' gaze, registered the sight of the little girl. His eyes widened slightly, briefly, but otherwise, he didn't react until they had entered his office.

He settled behind his desk, looked directly at the little girl, who stood just inside the office now, eyes darting between them warily.

"Hello again," he greeted her. "Perhaps you remember; we've met before, at James and Lily's house."

Severus felt like a fist had just wrapped around his heart, as it did every time he heard Lily's name lately. He was torn between irritation with Dumbledore for mentioning the Potters, and a whirlwind of other emotions surrounding the fact that this child that was his daughter had evidently met Lily; how long had she been there? Had he sent the Dark Lord straight to her as well, when he'd revealed Trelawny's prophecy to him?

The Headmaster might as well have saved his breath, however, if he was expecting a reply. Just as before, she maintained her silence, and cast her gaze away from him.

"I'm pleased to see you again," he continued, and then he looked at Severus. "Only a moment ago, I would have asked with some befuddlement why she's here, but I've just been struck by a remarkable resemblance. Perhaps I should have made the connection sooner, but I never would have imagined, you and Bellatrix…"

The child's eyes snapped up at him when he said her mother's name, and she stepped back a pace.

"There's not much to imagine," Severus said shortly, making it clear he wasn't about to discuss it here and now, "Albus, what happened to her?"

It was a loaded question, and Albus considered his response carefully.

"I can only tell you what I know. She was in hiding with the Potters from the night Sirius rescued her until a week before this past Halloween. She doesn't speak, as far as I know, though I suspect she could if she wanted to."

"This… this past Halloween?" Severus' face blanched at the implication.

"Severus," Albus continued, his voice suddenly heavy. "Sirius Black told me that Bellatrix had been casting Unforgivable Curses on the child the night he took her. I don't know anymore how reliable his account is, but I must admit it seems plausible."

Behind Severus, the child's face had gone blank. She studied the floor, motionless.

"He's a mass murderer," Severus pointed out, acidly. "How do we know it wasn't  _him_  that hurt her? Or perhaps they were in on it together. Why couldn't you have had her brought here, if you wanted to keep her safe?"

"It was a complicated situation. We didn't know what kind of tracking spells were placed on her, and moving her seemed too great a risk, once she had been brought to the Potters'."

Albus shook his head sadly. "Severus, if you've brought her here for answers, I'm afraid I don't have any more than what I've just told you."

"I brought her here," Severus said, "Because I have legal custody of her, now. Or I will, on Monday, when the orphanage files the paperwork."

At this, Albus looked genuinely surprised.

"I need to ask you to allow her to live with me here, at Hogwarts, during the school year. If I can do that, you have my word that my having her won't interfere with my duties here."

Albus considered the pair of them a moment. Then, he gave Severus a small smile. "I don't see that I have any choice but to allow it," he said at last, "She can stay in your quarters with you, until she is old enough to begin here as a student."

**(¯ˆ·.¸¸.·ˆ¯)**

Severus' professor's quarter's consisted of a small study, a tiny kitchen that was more of an eat-in pantry, and a corridor with four doors leading off of it: one led to his basement storerooms, where he had a small work area and a supply of potions ingredients that wouldn't fit in his office. Another led to the privy, and the remaining two led to a bedroom and a room that was somewhere in size between a very large closet and a very small room. He used it as an overflow library from his study, or he had done so until the day he brought Calista to live with him.

Her first night there, he had divided the books in the little library between the shelves in his study and the shelves in his office. He furnished the little room with a narrow bed and a small wardrobe. It was good that she hadn't brought much with her, because there wouldn't have been anywhere for her to put it if she had. There was a tall candelabra in the corner of the room. He lit it with his wand, and then went to his study, where he had last seen the little girl, sitting in one of the two chairs and clutching her little book.

"Calista?"

She looked up, startled again by the use of her name.

"Come with me. I want to show you your room. You can put your things away, too."

She slid off the chair, but wouldn't step closer to him. When he backed out of the study by one step, she took exactly one step forward. It seemed that she was determined not to come within arm's reach of him.

He stopped outside the doorway of her new bedroom, stepped aside, and motioned her in. "Go on," he said.

She looked at him apprehensively, then at the doorway. For a moment, she just stood in the hallway, and then she darted past him, into the room, as if she had been expecting him to try and hex her as she went by.

The first few days, she was incredibly wary of him; when he entered a room, she would leave it swiftly, casting furtive looks behind her to make sure he wasn't going to attack her when her back was turned. He was lucky if she ate even a forkful of the dinner he had sent from the school kitchens before she fled the little kitchen table.

She settled down some after a few days, and more or less ignored him. When he addressed her, she kept her eyes carefully blank, her expression neutral; he wasn't sure which he hated more, being blindly feared, or being completely disregarded. It was a bit like sharing his quarters with a hostile ghost, although he suspected he'd have gotten more interaction from a spirit.

He was sorely tempted to use legilimency to read her memories and find out what he was dealing with, but the last thing he wanted to do was frighten her more. She didn't trust him now; she might never trust him if he pulled her memories from her against her will.

Now that he was living with her, he was beginning to understand how an unobservant eye might mistake her for being simple; the more she acclimated to her living situation, the less often she showed her fear, and the more often that careful blankness dominated her features. When he spoke to her, she often ignored him entirely. When she did respond, it was always after a delay; she'd show up moments after he called her to dinner, would look up several seconds after he said her name.

Except, he was expert at reading people, and he could see the constant tension in her nerves, the way she was in fact finely attuned to his words and actions. That blank, shuttered look in her eyes; he'd bet his wand it was a natural inclination for Occlumency at work.

There was something else, too: He knew she could read. He'd seen her perusing the titles on the shelves in his study. She'd fled when he left the room, but not before he'd been able to tell she'd been reading the lettering on the spines of the books.

He was nearly certain she could speak, too. Certainly Bellatrix had never complained that her child was mute, but he had a hunch that her silence was only another mask of protection, like her blank eyes, and the way she made sure to keep, always, just out of arm's reach.

There was more, too; he'd have sworn he'd seen flashes of intelligence in her eyes, whenever she let her mask slip. He remembered how angry she'd looked when the woman at the orphanage had implied she couldn't read, or understand their conversation. She had looked at him with an open challenge in her eyes when he'd announced his intention to adopt her. He didn't think any of these things were hallmarks of a dim-witted or oblivious child.

Severus supposed some of his assumptions about the girl were made based on arrogance. He didn't think a child of his could possibly be as simple as people seemed to believe Calista was. And the books, again; he'd caught her a few more times in his study, and he'd have sworn that she lingered on some titles longer than others, as if gauging her interest on a particular topic.

She never touched any of the books, perhaps out of the correct assumption that Severus did not like his things to be touched, but he could tell she  _wanted_  to take one off the shelf and read. Perhaps Severus had a cynical view of children, but he did not think that many other six-year-olds would be able to read the majority of the titles on his shelf.

So, even though he could see how one might, at first, think that Calista was slow, he didn't see how anyone who had spent any considerable length of time with her could possibly stand by that assumption.

Finally, after weeks of tiptoeing around each other, of steadfast silence from the child, Severus took down a volume from the shelf that he had often seen Calista's eyes lingering on. It was a book of theory, mostly concerning how potion-making differed from standard magic cast with a wand, and required a different set of skills as well as a different mindset.

He was familiar with the text, and knew it was quite a lofty read, with few illustrations, but perhaps that didn't matter.

He doubted that Calista would understand any of it yet, bright or not, but he was at a loss as to how to engage the child; they couldn't continue like this forever, each living in their own little sphere, utterly disconnected from the other.

Severus sat down in of the chairs in his study, and called Calista's name. A moment later, the child arrived as requested, but her gaze was trained on the rough stone floor.

He held the book up, so she could see title on the cover.

"You're too young to read this by yourself," he said awkwardly, "But I thought perhaps I could read some of it to you…"

He could see the slight girl hesitating, before she stepped closer, still just out of arm's reach. Severus frowned at her, but she couldn't see it, with her eyes still cast down.

"Sit down," he said, motioning towards the other chair in the study.

Calista stayed exactly where she was for a few seconds, before slowly doing as she was told, and settling on the room's only other chair.

Her delayed response could be read one of two ways; perhaps some would think that she'd taken several seconds to process what he'd said. He had a strong suspicion that it was an act of defiance, a statement that she'd obey when she felt like it. He hoped he was right; it would mean she wasn't broken, had a will of her own.

Severus opened the heavy volume at random, and started to read aloud. Calista stared resolutely at her lap, and almost anyone would have thought she wasn't listening. Except, he could see that her ears were perked, alert.

He read to her for the better part of an hour; as the minutes passed, and her posture remained precisely the same, he found that he had been hoping, somehow, that this could be some kind of breakthrough. He didn't know what he had expected, exactly; that she would look up, a new light in her eyes? That she would creep closer, wanting to see the words on the page for herself? Or perhaps, that she would open her mouth, ask him a question?

Well, none of those things had happened, and his throat was getting dry. This had been utterly fruitless. He sighed, snapping the book shut.

"You may go now, if you wish," he said, tiredly.

In an instant, she was gone, as if she had never been in the office with him.

He stood and replaced the book, feeling defeated. He didn't understand; he'd been playing by her rules for weeks, allowing her to keep her distance and hold her silence. He'd kept his demeanour calm, always, when he spoke to her, and he tried not to make sudden movements in her vicinity. Why then, was she still afraid of him? What could have possibly happened to her, that she couldn't see his kindness, his concern, for what it was?

It was in fact exceedingly difficult for him to be so careful around her; he wasn't a particularly placid man by nature, and he certainly wasn't one to walk on eggshells around a mere child. He didn't possess infinite amounts of patience, and this standoffish, flighty child was rapidly draining his last reserves.

He hadn't bothered to try reading to her again, since it had had about as much effect as anything else he'd tried to do to connect with her. Then, perhaps two weeks after that night, he stepped quietly into his study and saw Calista kneeling on the cold stone floor in front of the bookshelves, the heavy red volume he had been reading to her open and cradled carefully in her arms.

He opened his mouth with the intention of scolding her for touching his books without permission, but closed it again and decided not to announce his presence just yet.

He watched as her dark eyes roved rapidly across the pages, and it was clear that she was deeply absorbed in the volume. When he saw her turn a page, it was done so carefully that he could hardly fault her for not properly respecting his books.

He watched her for several minutes before turning and leaving the room silently.

_Let her read_ , he thought to himself,  _Perhaps it will give us something to communicate about._

So far, Severus had had precious little to bother making rules about, since Calista was in her room most of the time, and in in plain sight in his study the rest of the time. There weren't many places in the small flat for her to hide, though she did try, most of the time, to be in a separate room from the one he was in.

He did insist upon them eating dinner together, mostly because she was startlingly thin and he doubted she would eat at all if there weren't someone watching her and making sure she did.

As they sat down for dinner on the night he'd caught her reading in his study, and Calista stared blankly and emotionlessly at her plate once more, he looked across the table at her and spoke.

"I saw you reading my book earlier," he said, and watched her head snap up more quickly than he had seen her do anything in weeks. He was startled by the look in her eyes, which was one of abject terror. It was as if he'd lifted his wand, pointed it directly at her.

And then, as quickly as he had time to see her expression, her dark eyes had been masked with a blank expression once more. Something in the way the expression slid across her features jolted him.

_It is Occlumency_ , he thought,  _I'm certain of it._

To see any exhibition of a skill this specialized in a child was very unusual, but children often expressed their magical ability in surprisingly strong ways when they were young. If his childhood had drawn out his own ability for Occlumency, then certainly hers could do the same.

"I'm not angry with you," Severus said slowly, "You were treating it well, although I would like you to ask before you read any of my books. Some of them are priceless, and most of them are not at all appropriate for you."

He paused, watching for some sign of expression on the girl's face, but there was none, so he continued.

"I can read more of that book with you, if you wish."

Calista stared at him for several seconds, before slowly shaking her head,  _No_. Then she rose from the table and disappeared from the room once more.

Well; it was only the second time she'd given him a direct response, and even that tally was only valid if he considered her gripping his wrist when he'd asked if she'd ever been apparated. True, she'd only wanted to avoid being splinched that time, and this time she'd promptly fled, but it had to be some sort of progress, didn't it?

At any rate, after that attempt at communicating, he didn't see her anywhere near his bookshelf again. He did not know if she was respecting his wishes not to touch the books, or if she was avoiding anything that might allow them to start a conversation.

As she continued to avoid him, day after day, he began to seriously suspect the latter, and wondered what else he could possibly do to get the child to communicate with him, to take even the tiniest step towards trusting him.

**(¯ˆ·.¸¸.·ˆ¯)**

Perhaps a month after catching her reading his book, and his disastrous attempt to start a conversation with her, there came a day where he didn't see her at all during the day, and she didn't come when he called her for dinner, either.

He checked his study, checked the knob to the stairs to be sure she wouldn't have been able to get down there. Her bedroom door was shut. He tapped at it.

"Calista?" He hadn't meant to but a note of irritation had crept into his voice. He let her avoid him nearly every minute of the day; he insisted only that she actually eat dinner each night, so that she would stay alive. It seemed more than reasonable for him to expect that she followed this one rule.

When he heard nothing from within the room, he eased the door open. It was dark; he lifted his wand.

" _Lumos_ ," he muttered, and peered into the semi-lightened room.

He made out a tiny form crouched at the far end of her bed, her back against the headboard. His frustration quickly changed to alarm as he heard the tiny whimpering sounds coming from where she sat curled tightly into a fetal position. It was the first time he had heard her make a sound, but he didn't have time to register the fact as he strode across the room, crouching down over her.

"Calista," he said urgently, "What happened? Are you hurt? What…?" he trailed off as he realized the small girl was asleep.

Her eyes were closed, though her hands were clenched tightly into fists. Beneath the papery eyelids, he could see her eyes moving rapidly back and forth. She was dreaming.

He reached out and touched her shoulder, and the girl started awake, her eyes snapping open to meet his gaze.

She was so distraught and still half-asleep, that he had access to her feelings and memories without even consciously trying to. He was swept along with her wild emotions by accident, a writhing mix of anger and hurt; there was an icy rage, far too cold to belong to a normal child, and there was an animal sense of fear, an ever-present instinct to  _run, run, run_.

He tried to focus on her memories, but they were tangled up in the nightmare she had been having, and her emotions were so wild and strong that he could not focus on anything else.

Only seconds after he had begun to feel her tumultuous emotions, her eyes went blank and he could feel nothing, not without deliberately trying, and he knew she would feel the intrusion, and likely be even more afraid.

Instinctually, Severus pulled the child close to him, and held her there. He could feel her trembling, and as soon as he had pulled her into the embrace, her entire body stiffened, her nerves taut. He felt she was about to wrench away from him and bolt at any moment.

"Calista," he whispered urgently, "I will not hurt you."

She did wrench herself away then, pulled her knees around herself, and buried her head in them. Her shoulders shook; he wasn't sure if she was crying or just trembling.

Carefully, lightly, he put his hand on her shoulder.

"You were having a dream. Whatever you're afraid of, it can't reach you here." he said.

But she wouldn't lift her head again, wouldn't look at him; for more than an hour, she only shook. Breathy gasps told him that she was indeed crying. He felt completely inadequate in that moment, not knowing how to make her stop, how to comfort her, how he could convince her that she was safe. He kept his hand on her shoulder; she seemed to tolerate that, or perhaps not to notice it, for quite some time.

Finally, her tears evidently spent, she sucked in a great breath, pulled away from him, and lay down with her back to him.

He stayed there until he could tell that she'd fallen asleep, until the even rhythm of her breathing made him suddenly very tired himself.

He left her bedroom door ajar, so she might see light from the corridor if she woke up while it was still dark.

It wasn't the first time Severus had felt helpless to aid someone he cared about, and he hadn't grown any fonder of the feeling. His own sleep was troubled that night, as he wondered what he could possibly do to help a child who didn't want the help she so clearly needed, or at least didn't want it from him.


	3. "I can give you something that will make you sleep without dreams."

 

Tired as he was, Severus found he could barely sleep that night himself. He was caught up in his own flood of powerful emotions, similar in nature, if not in content, to Calista's.

He felt anger, at whatever and whoever had hurt Calista so badly; now that he had touched her emotions, he understood that something catastrophic had happened to her, though without reading her memories he could do little more than guess at precisely what it was. There was a tangled mess of something else, too; He felt all at once closer to the child and further disconnected.

Her silences, her wary gaze - these things he could only guess at the meanings of. But the emotions she'd unwittingly shared with him that night, those were clear, those were things he could comprehend and identify with, things he could at least  _try_  to communicate with her about.

But that was where the distance came into play. He had felt compelled, when he felt the waves of her fear and anger, to try and comfort her, but she'd shut him out, yet again. He was beginning to suspect it was more than fear; perhaps she simply didn't  _like_  him.

And that was where, he realised, that his own pull of sadness came from; he found that he actually  _wanted_  her to like him, to trust him, now more than ever. Of course he had wanted, all along, to have some kind of relationship with her, but now, something had changed.

Something had happened to him when he'd touched her mind, for that brief moment. He had felt her surface emotions, certainly, but there had been something else about that moment; something in her mind that he couldn't quite identify, but that felt incredibly familiar. He felt, in that instant, a connection to her.

There was something about the feel of her mind that reminded him, powerfully, of himself. It wasn't so much that they shared the same emotions, because that wasn't quite true. It was that they  _felt_  their emotions in the same way; the same things went together in both of their minds. Fear, hurt… and bitterness, defiance. She had his charged, defensive spirit, if he were to put a fine point on it.

And all of that made him want to help her, to connect with her. There was more to her than those wild emotions he had felt; there had to be. The darkness he felt inside of her was at odds with the child she was, and he wanted for her to be able to  _be_  that child. He wanted her to feel safe, to smile. He wanted her to feel… loved.

But precisely how was he going to accomplish that when he himself had no idea exactly what that felt like? He had loved, but had never been loved, not truly, in return. His own parents had set no example. How could he give his child something that he couldn't even comprehend?

He felt something shift in him, that night. In his heart, Calista went from being a child he shared blood with that he wanted to help, to being, truly, his daughter. Once he had felt the similarities between them, he found it natural, suddenly, to think of her that way. It became more imperative to him than ever before to convince her that he could be trusted.

But he'd tried telling her that he wouldn't hurt her, that she was safe with him, and she evidently didn't believe him. If only he could enter her mind, could  _show_  her exactly how he felt about her, how badly he wanted to help her. He didn't know the words that would make her listen, and even though legilimency seemed like an ideal solution to their communication disconnect, he sensed that it would do his cause more harm than good, at least currently.

If she couldn't even stand to be in the same room with him most of the time, how could he expect that she would allow him to enter her mind? She would likely view any intrusion as an attack, even if he only meant to show her that he meant well. She was too fragile, too raw, beneath her mask of indifference to him.

He would have to wait, find some other way to earn her trust before he could know anything else about her.

Since he didn't sleep that night at all, he rose much earlier than he was prone to do, a dull headache pounding at his temples from the lack of sleep.

He needed coffee, or perhaps a very strong tea, and then he needed to find some way to approach Calista, but as he entered the small hearth room that held a fireplace for cooking, and a small wooden table with two chairs, he froze. Calista was already in the room, and he watched her from the doorway, as silent as he could be.

Calista had dragged one of the wooden chairs over to the narrow worktop next to the fireplace, and was standing on its seat. She had an earthenware mug on the counter, and was pouring an aromatic black liquid into it.

The liquid steamed and hissed as it filled the cup, and he caught a strong smell of coffee. He watched, holding his silence, as she stepped down from the chair with the mug held carefully between her two hands, and set it gently on the table. Severus slipped further back into the shadows to avoid being discovered.

She returned to the chair, and leaned it against herself as she slowly pulled it back to the table. She held the chair a tiny bit off the floor, so it wouldn't make a sound, and he saw her pale face turn pink with the effort of holding up the chair, which probably weighed almost as much as she did.

Once she had returned the chair to its proper place, she approached the work-top, and standing on tiptoes, removed the now-empty carafe, washed it and dried it, and then put it back exactly where he usually kept it.

Finally, when the room looked exactly as it had before, save for the mug and the girl, she climbed into the chair and reached for the mug. Even though the liquid was still steaming and must have been quite hot, she sipped at it quickly, and had drained the mug in a matter of moments.

As soon as it was gone, she washed the mug and put it away, and wiped the tabletop off with the end of her sleeve. Then she looked slowly around the room, as if taking inventory of its contents.

When her eyes swept by the doorway in which Severus stood, he stepped quietly backwards, and retreated into his study. He had learned by now that approaching Calista when she thought she was alone would only send her bolting from the room, and he might not catch sight of her again all day.

It occurred to Severus that Calista was far too young to be drinking coffee, and that she must have been drinking it for quite some time to be taking it black and without sugar, not to mention scalding hot. How had she acquired that particular habit?

It seemed he had stumbled on something simply by awakening early, because he next day, and the one following it, and for more than a week's worth of days, he rose early, and watched silently from the doorway as Calista followed her morning routine.

She would be up by four in the morning, brewing a strong batch of coffee, and she would leave the room exactly as she had found it by four-thirty. From there, she would usually return to her bedroom, and since he had found her in the grip of a nightmare, she always closed it softly, and spent what appeared to be the whole of the day in there. As if she was punishing him for having discovered her mid-nightmare, she avoided him now more than ever before, not allowing him a single glimpse of her until dinnertime every day, or so she evidently thought.

Mealtimes were as they had always been, for he would be simmering with things he needed to say to her, and needed to hear her say, but she was persistently silent and distant.

Severus was frustrated, and disheartened. Despite his resolve, he wasn't making any progress at all in connecting with her, and in the meantime Calista was growing still thinner and more frail-looking, and she always had dark circles underneath her eyes.

He didn't understand how she could look so tired when she spent most of the day in her room, presumably sleeping, until he had been watching her in the mornings for a little over a month.

One afternoon, he stepped into the small kitchen to make himself some tea. Since it was the middle of the day and Calista would not usually be within sight for a few hours still, he was surprised to find her in the small kitchen, sitting at the little table with yet another mug of coffee.

He forced himself to keep walking as though he hadn't even noticed her, and was surprised yet again when she didn't immediately bolt as he entered the room. He paused at the worktop, willing himself to think of the right thing to say or do so that she'd stay in the room. That was when he noticed that the coffee carafe still had about another cups worth left in it, and he changed his plan.

He turned his head slowly and said, in a soft voice,

"Calista, may I have some of this, too?"

He was careful to any sort of emotion out of his voice. Perhaps if he acted as though this was a commonplace situation they were in, she would follow suit.

As soon as he spoke, she stiffened and he truly thought she was going to leave the room once more, but as the silence stretched out, she slowly raised her gaze to him. Flight was written all over her, but she stayed.

Finally, she nodded slowly,  _yes_.

Still acting as if this was a normal occurrence, he filled his mug and brought it to the table, sitting across from her.

He wanted to speak to her, to see if he could finally coax a reply, but he didn't want to push his luck just yet, so instead he made a show of focusing on his coffee, even when every sense but his vision was focused on the small girl across the table from him.

Calista did not stay in the room long. She finished her coffee, washed her mug and put it away, and then washed the now-empty carafe and put it carefully away, too. Then, silently, she left the room, and he didn't see her again until dinnertime, which was silent as usual, despite his awkwardly offering her once more to read to her from the book she seemed to enjoy.

The next morning, Severus again forced himself out of bed just after four, and made his way to the kitchen doorway.

He nearly dropped his jaw in shock when he saw that there were  _two_  mugs of steaming coffee on the table, and that Calista was already in her chair, her legs drawn up underneath her to keep her bare toes warm.

It only took him a second to compose himself, and he entered the room with a controlled expression, settling at the table as if this was something they did every day. He sipped at his coffee, and restrained himself to only one sentence:

"Thank you for the coffee, Calista."

She didn't reply, but she didn't flee, either; She stayed at the table until both of them had drained their mugs. He didn't dare leave, not when she was willingly sharing the same space with him. After they had sat in silence for a while, she rose from her chair, empty mug in hand. He thought she would wash it quickly and then take her leave, but incredibly, she stepped  _closer_  instead of away.

She approached his chair, and he scarcely dared to breathe, for this was the closest that his daughter had ever voluntarily been to him, save for the seconds it had taken him to Apparate them on the first day he had met her. She didn't linger, though; she snatched his mug off the table, then scurried over to the basin with both of their mugs, washing them both and then putting them away.

For the next several days, Severus arose early to find two mugs set at the table. He forced himself not to speak to her much, for on the few days when he did, she would leave the room abruptly, pausing only to wash her mug.

He found it strange that she was so insistent upon leaving the room exactly as she found it, now that he obviously knew what she was up to in the kitchen.

It occurred to him that this careful, tentative alliance with Calista was something like trying to tame a wild animal. He had to be patient and quiet, and she would sit for a little bit longer before she disappeared from sight.

His careful silence paid off sooner than he thought it would. One morning as he finished his coffee, he thought about remaining in the kitchen a little longer, debating the merits of trying, yet again, to initiate a conversation. In the end, he decided that it was more likely to send her fleeing than anything else, and so he rose from the table, and walked down the stone hallway.

He sensed rather than saw that Calista was a few paces behind him, following him like a tiny, silent shadow. He reached a doorway and opened it, revealing a rough stone staircase that descended into darkness.

He lit his wand and turned, thinking to invite Calista to follow him downstairs to the workroom, but as soon as he'd made eye contact, she scurried away. With a heavy sigh, he descended the stairs himself, emerging into his favorite room in the apartment.

In the center of the vast, cavernous room a fireplace stood, waiting to be lit, and on a high table behind it there were several cauldrons in different sizes, and around the room were shelves of potion ingredients in bottles, and even more shelves of books, most of these stained with age and use. There was a very small room off of this main chamber that housed his reserve stores of potions ingredients

It was Saturday, and he had no classes to teach, but there were a few potions the Hospital Wing had sent word they were running low on, so he decided to replenish their stores, settling into the familiar, comforting rhythm of potions-brewing.

It was hours before he finished, bottling the last of his brews carefully. He'd bring them to Madame Pomfrey tomorrow; right now, he was feeling refreshed from the day in his workshop, and was encouraged to try, just once more, to see if Calista wanted him to read to her.

Softly, he climbed the stairs and walked down the hallway to her bedroom. The door was slightly ajar. it was dark in the room as evening began to set in.

Calista was sitting on her bed, in the same place she'd been before, when he'd found her having a nightmare. This time, though, she was awake; he turned her head as light from the hall spilled across the floor of her room. Her eyes were wide and dark; he couldn't make out an expression in them. Her face, though… she looked exhausted, and he was startled to notice a dark trickle of blood running down her chin. Her teeth were pressed into the soft skin of her lower lip, and her hands were curled up tightly as well, fingernails pressing into the thick part of her palms.

All at once, he understood why she always looked so fragile, why there were nearly always dark circles under her eyes. He'd thought that perhaps she slept most of the day, when she was hiding in her room, but now he realised that precisely the opposite appeared to be true; she wasn't sleeping all day. He doubted now that she'd been sleeping much at all.

Of course; the nightmare. Why had he assumed it had been a solitary event? What if she had them all the time? What recourse could the little girl possibly have against them, save for refusing to sleep in the first place?

Severus lit his wand and sent the light to the candelabra that stood in the corner of the small room.

In the thin light, her face looked even paler and more sickly than usual, her eyes looking huge in the tiny face, their deep recesses lined with dark smudges. She looked frankly pitiful, and he could not stand to watch her struggle to stay awake through the night.

Strangely, he felt a hollow sort of relief flood through him; here, at last was something she needed that he decidedly  _could_  help her with.

"Come with me, Calista," he said softly, "I can give you something that will make you sleep without dreams."

He could see the struggle in her features as her hesitance to trust him warred with her desperate need to sleep.

Finally, she swung her legs over the side of the bed and stood. He reached out, tentatively, his hand open for her to take. She stared at his hand for a minute, and then shook her head, almost imperceptibly. Still, she followed him as he left the room, all the way down the corridor of his quarters, and out the door, across another small corridor, into his office.

He had a few sleeping draughts of various potencies ready at any given time; sometimes, he had trouble sleeping himself, and sometimes the Hospital Wing needed them.

There was a fairly mild one that would likely keep the dreamer from remembering any of their dreams in the morning, and he knew that this was probably the only thing he had that might be okay to give to a child. He reached for it, and at the last second shifted his aim, taking a smaller bottle filled with a deep purple liquid.

Night Blossom Draught was much stronger stuff. It would knock someone out in less than a minute, and they'd likely sleep twelve hours or more without stirring. It often made the drinker groggy and fuzzy-headed, and it most certainly didn't allow even enough thought for a meaningless dream. In potency, it was second only to a Draught of Living Death.

He knew that Night Blossom was a powerful ingredient that was carefully controlled, and he knew that under normal circumstances, he definitely shouldn't give anything with Night Blossom in it to a child, but he also knew that he had promised his daughter a dreamless sleep, and that she had decided to trust him.

He would not take any chances. He would make good on his promise, because it might be the only chance he got in a long time to show her that he could be trusted.

He unscrewed the bottle's cap and poured just a few drops onto her tongue, roughly a quarter of what he would have given an adult.

As soon as he had screwed the cap back on and replaced the bottle on the shelf, Calista's eyelids began to droop, and she swayed where she stood.

He reached out for her again, watching her as he did so for signs that she would once again dart away from him. Instead, her eyes closed, and he barely had time to grab her to stop her from falling.

She didn't react to his touch at all, so he picked her up carefully, holding her to his shoulder. For a moment, he simply stood still, hardly daring to breathe.

Having children wasn't something he had ever consciously wished for. He'd never had a close relationship with either of his parents, and he never understood precisely what was meant when people spoke about parental bonding.

Now, with the warm weight of his daughter resting on his shoulder, her even breathing tickling his neck, he thought he was beginning to understand. He could think of very little at that very moment that could be as precious as the little girl that slept in his arms, and he closed his eyes, simply holding her for several minutes.

At last, he carried her back to her room and laid her gently on her bed. He watched her a few minutes more, marveling at the change in her features.

She looked so peaceful, her dark hair spread in tangles over the pillow. She breathed evenly, and there was no sign of dreaming at all in her relaxed form. Without her carefully guarded eyes staring back at him, she looked innocent, like the child she was. There was no sign on those features, at this moment, of the fear that weighed heavily on her when she was awake. There was no indication that she had had anything but a normal childhood so far, no sign that she had been hurt or betrayed by those that were supposed to care for her.

It wounded him, to see what she should have been like, had she not been haunted by whatever horrors had already visited her. He felt a resolve strengthening inside of himself, to protect her from being hurt again. He couldn't change what had already happened; but he could keep her safe from this point on, could ensure that no one hurt her again.


	4. "See what happens when you don't mind your mother? "

 

Calista slept for hours. After ten hours, he checked on her to make sure she was still all right, that she hadn't had an adverse reaction to the potion. She was still sleeping peacefully; he eased out of the room, closing the door most of the way behind him.

Finally, after a full eighteen hours, he heard her stirring. It was nearly lunchtime; he had given her the potion mid-evening the night before. When he heard rustling coming from her bedroom, he went to the kitchen and brewed some coffee.

By the time Calista appeared in the doorway, he was sitting at the table, two mugs ready, waiting for her. She looked at him for a moment before crossing the room to sit across from him at the table.

Her mouth opened slightly, and for a second he wondered if she was going to say something to him at last, but then she gave a wide yawn, and rubbed her eyes with tiny, balled fists. Apparently, she had not completely shaken off the effects of the potion.

"Did you sleep better?" he asked, looking into his mug to keep from startling her. He didn't think he'd ever get used to speaking to someone who would not answer back.

She looked up, sleep still clouding her eyes, and nodded up and down.

Her eyelids were still half-closed, and she drained half her coffee mug in one sip. Severus was once again struck by the thought that it probably wasn't very healthy to have a six-year-old downing coffee, but he wasn't ready to pick that fight just yet; they had bigger problems.

"Good," he said finally, "I'm glad that it helped."

He knew his voice sounded strained, but he was in uncharted territory. He couldn't be himself with the child, because he was still trying to get her to open up, to trust him. It was unnatural for him to walk on eggshells in conversation, but if he spoke to her like she was one of his students… he didn't know if she could separate dripping sarcasm from plain dislike, so for now, he would be careful.

Giving Calista a drop of Night Blossom Draught at night became as much of a routine as their morning coffee, and Severus knew that he would eventually have to wean her off the potion, and that it wouldn't be easy, but for now he was just glad that she was sleeping.

Already, she looked healthier, her eyes not so shadowed, and she had more energy. She still wouldn't communicate beyond nodding yes or no, but she had all but ceased to leave the room when he entered it, and if he asked her a direct yes or no question, there was about a fifty-fifty chance of her responding.

Soon, the school year really began to pick up, and with it, his workload. When winter was just beginning to thaw, the OWL and NEWT students demanded more of his time, and he often only saw Calista twice a day for any length of time, when they had their coffee and at dinnertime. He was in the habit of checking in on her between classes, but that hardly counted as spending time with her, especially since she never said a word.

Strangely enough, the less he was around, the more time Calista spent in the same room as him. She began to linger after dinner, sometimes following him silently to his office, where she sat in the spare chair while he graded papers.

She was always so quiet that he sometimes forgot she was there, and he'd be surprised to look up hours later, and see Calista's dark eyes watching his quill move across the lines of another student essay.

One night, after setting the last of the graded papers aside, he looked at Calista, who looked as though she was about to fall asleep in her chair. It was well past midnight, and the little girl had been awake since dawn. He should give her a drop of the potion and send her to bed… and yet…

"Calista? Would you like me to read to you from that book before bed?"

He'd never had any luck with this before, but she'd just willingly spent hours in the same room with him; perhaps there was a chance, this time.

There was a moment where he thought she might leave, but then she nodded her head, tentatively, up and down.  _Yes_.

He retrieved the book from his study, sat back at his desk, and began to read. It was much like before; she kept her eyes down, although he could see that her ears were perked, so she was listening.

And then, when he reached one particular passage, suddenly she was eyeing him intently, visibly attentive to what he was saying. He tried not to let on that he had noticed, as he read:

" _There have been several recorded examples over the centuries of Squibs and non-magical persons related to a witch or wizard performing feats in this branch of magic. Of course, successfully brewing a potion requires extensive knowledge of the magical ingredients used, but if a well-schooled person of non-magical blood finds the right ingredients, it is not impossible for them to follow a recipe and create an effective potion. Most recorded examples of this are concerned with simple potions, such as a draught able to cure boils or irritate the skin, but precious few have achieved success with moderately complicated potions. Most of these were marketed in the sixteenth through nineteenth century as 'Miracle Elixirs', sold at high costs to Muggles with no knowledge of the wizarding world. Such potions often claimed to restore hearing to a deaf person, or return mobility to a handicapped person, but the vast majority of these Elixirs were merely All-purpose vigor-inducing potions, that would occasionally increase auditory or muscular function, but the effects of these potions seldom lasted more than six hours. Purveyors of these rudimentary potions were ironically referred to as "witch doctors". Thus, it is the field of potion making that has the distinction of being the only branch of magic that does not necessarily require wizarding blood to perform."_

He could see her fighting back a yawn. Her jaw clenched with the effort of hiding it, but it prompted him to check the time. It was well after midnight, now. Time for both of them to go to sleep. He closed the book, set it down on his desk, and rose, reaching for a little bottle on one of his shelves. A week ago, he had mixed a very mild Drowsiness Draught with just a small amount of the Night Blossom Draught added to it. It was definitely a much safer option long-term, but he still wanted her to be able to sleep without it.

**(¯ˆ·.¸¸.·ˆ¯)**

The next day, while on a two-hour recess between classes, Severus retreated to his workroom to experiment with variations on a Catseye Concoction, something he'd been working on with his sixth-years. The potion, named for its key ingredient, would turn the drinker into a cat for a few hours, and he was curious as to whether the potion could be adapted to affect other transformations.

So far, he had no luck using a bat's eye or a newt's eye, but he was interested to see what would happen with a rat's eye. As he worked, he faintly heard small feet coming down the stairs; evidently, he had not locked the door behind him. Still, perhaps it was for the best. While her wouldn't have wanted her wandering down here on her own, he was actually pleased that she had decided to come down; could it be that she actually  _wanted_  to spend time with him?

He decided to keep working, and pretend he hadn't noticed. Within moments, he had acquired a small, dark-haired shadow at his side, and she watched him stir the contents of the cauldron.

He listed each of the ingredients aloud as he added them, for her benefit. She was silent, as always, but he could feel the rapt attention of her gaze on him while he worked; why had he never thought of this before?

He was nearly through with the potion when he realised he'd left one of the ingredients he needed in his office. He should have a larger jar of it down here somewhere; he scanned the shelf behind his worktop to see if there were any there. "Terag leaves," he mused, "Six months wilted"

There was a jar of fresh ones to his left, which was what the potion actually called for, but he'd found that by allowing the leaves to wilt in an airtight jar actually made the potion more stable, and able to be bottled longer before being used, so that was his habit now. He usually had some aging down here, at the bench and in the little storeroom.

As he looked through all of the jars that were within reach, still stirring the cauldron with his other hand, he sensed that Calista had wandered away. He glanced back to see where she was, afraid she would find something dangerous down here.

She was in the storeroom, perusing the jars. He was just about to call out to her when she picked one off the shelf, and headed back towards him. She stepped right next to him, held the jar up. It was precisely what he'd been looking for. Underneath 'Terag Leaves' on the label, he had handwritten 'Aged beginning' and a date several months prior.

Calista actually smiled when she held the jar out, and he was so surprised and disarmed by it that he nearly dropped the jar on the floor as he took it from her. He saw that she was quite proud of herself, too, for finding the right jar so quickly.

Here, at last, was some kind of real progress. He smiled back at her, thanked her for bringing him the jar. Behind him, the potion threatened to boil over, so he turned his attention back to it, stirring it down quickly before adding the leaves Calista had brought over. She returned to watching him silently, but he noticed that she was standing closer to him than she had ever done before; if he'd thought it wouldn't send her scurrying again, he could have brought his arm around her shoulders.

The next time, and the next, that he went down to his workroom, she followed right behind him, and watched him, only a pace away. When an ingredient he needed wasn't right nearby, she disappeared into the storeroom to find it for him, seeming to enjoy the challenge of finding the correct jar or vial. Not once did she bring him the wrong thing.

Typically, Severus didn't like anyone rummaging around on his shelves, but in this instance he was glad for it; it felt like a breakthrough. As soon as he unlocked the door to the basement workroom, Calista would come, within moments, from wherever in the flat she'd been hiding, and follow him down. He began to brew extra batches of potions he didn't really need, kept the Hospital Wing incredibly well-stocked, just so she would spend time with him.

He asked her at dinner nearly every night if she wanted him to read the red book to her, even though historically, she nearly always said no. Once they had started spending time together in the workroom, that changed, too. Slowly, she began to nod  _yes_  more and more often, until they were reading from it nearly every night.

One afternoon, after Calista had brought him every single one of the twelve ingredients needed for a potion he would be teaching the fourth years in class the next day, he glanced down at her while he was stirring the cauldron. Her eyes followed him keenly, and he saw that she stood on her tiptoes, stretching her neck, trying to see the contents of the cauldron.

"Would you like to stir it?" he asked, pleased to see her engaged in something, anything with interest.

She nodded her head,  _yes_ , as eagerly as he had ever seen her do anything. His eyes swept over the room, quickly. He didn't have a step stool, or anything she could stand on to reach the worktop.

"I'm going to lift you up, so you can reach the cauldron," he said, setting down the wooden spoon he was using to stir it.

Before she could change her mind and run away, he plucked her up off the floor, and held her high enough so that she could reach the worktop. Predictably, he felt her stiffen, her heart racing. He held her in front of the bubbling cauldron, and murmured in her ear.

"It's all right, Calista. I've told you, I won't hurt you. Go ahead and stir the potion."

She reached out and picked up the wooden spoon from the worktop, and swirled it around inside the cauldron, watching the bubbles grow smaller. She imitated exactly the way he had been stirring it, and after a few moments he felt her begin to relax slightly as she stirred the potion, heartbeat returning to a regular pace.

When Severus judged that the potion was finished, he set Calista down carefully, and extinguished the flame beneath the cauldron with his wand.

"I daresay you've done better than most of my students will," he said wryly, "And they've got about eight years on you."

A tiny flickered across her features, the second one he had seen from her.

**(¯ˆ·.¸¸.·ˆ¯)**

Every two weeks, he mixed a new batch of sleeping potion for Calista, each time lowering the amount of Night Blossom Draught he added to it. Finally, in his latest batch, he had put none of it at all. It wasn't a potion that anyone should take for longer than was necessary, especially bot a child. He had been careful, and she was not experiencing any dependency or ill effects that he could see, but he was glad she was weaned off of it, now.

But a few days after changing the potion, she began to look tired again; the dark circles reappeared under her eyes, and she was back to two cups of coffee a day, where she had previously been having only one, in the morning.

He asked her, several times, if she was sleeping all right, and each time, she nodded that yes, she was.

Five days after he had stopped giving her the Night Blossom Draught, she was sitting in his study one evening after dinner, while he was in the opposite chair, reading to her from the same red book; they were nearly finished with it, now. There were perhaps thirty pages left in it.

For a while, she'd been actually looking at him while he read, cocking her head while she listened, appearing interested. But tonight, it was as before: her eyes were cast down, fixed on her hands in her lap. Only the set of her shoulders, the way her ears perked slightly in his direction, told him that she was listening at all.

He sighed, and closed the book after perhaps a quarter of an hour. It had felt, for a while, that they were making progress, and now it was all slipping backwards.

He looked at her, still holding the book on his lap.

"Do you trust me, Calista?" he asked suddenly.

She seemed jolted by the question, and looked up. Her expression was wary, but she did meet his gaze. He waited; she didn't indicate a yes or no answer, just stared at him.

"I want you to trust me," he said earnestly, not knowing precisely why they were slipping backwards, but wanting to stop it from getting worse, "I wish you would speak to me. If you would just tell me what's wrong..."

But of course, she wouldn't; she looked at him a moment longer, then rose from her chair and left the study. He sighed, then stood and reshelved the book.

He had a feeling that she was having trouble sleeping again, that perhaps her nightmares had even come back, but how could he help her overcome her fears, her bad dreams, if he didn't know what they were? She wasn't going to tell him; that had been blindingly obvious over the last several months.

The next night, as he passed her bedroom door on his own way to bed, he heard something coming from her room; it sounded like she was whimpering. He pushed open the door, lit his wand.

She was asleep, but she was clearly having another nightmare; there were tears shining on her face, and her eyes moved rapidly back and forth, behind her closed eyelids.

He laid his hand on her shoulder, and called her name a few times, but she would not wake up. He shook her gently, calling her name louder; she cried out in her sleep, but still didn't wake.

"Calista!" he said urgently, loudly. Her eyes snapped open, and he was again immediately drawn into a stream of wild fear and anger, her emotions practically rolling out of her in waves.

This time, he could not restrain himself. He had to know; enough was enough. He had tried for months to earn her trust, to ease her into telling him what had happened that had her frightened so badly, why she felt that she couldn't speak.

She couldn't take sleeping potions forever; if he was going to truly help her, then he needed to know what caused her nightmares, why she was so silent, what was behind the furor of emotions he knew swirled within her mind.

He sat down on the edge of her bed, locked his eyes onto hers, prepared to see at last what she was hiding. She shut her eyes, turned her face away from him, but this had gone on too long with too little progress; he was tired of seeing her look so haunted and not understanding why.

"Open your eyes," he commanded, in a tone he had never used with her before, "Look at me."

She obeyed, perhaps simply because of his tone. But even as he watched, a familiar transitioned occurred within her eyes. As if she had thrown a switch, a carefully blank look came into them, and he sensed a barrier sliding over her thoughts.

However, she was only an untrained child and he was very skilled in this art; he pushed through her barrier as easily as one could sweep cobwebs away from a window.

Once again, he was caught in the seething stream of anger and fear. He was startled to find that he could not immediately focus; the sheer strength of her emotions overpowered anything else, and he had to navigate his way carefully through them to find out what was causing them.

He had never entered a the mind of a child so young before, and he found that, even though her mind still had that pull of familiarity to him, it was also completely alien.

Where searching an adult's mind was a matter of finding pictures, sounds, and feelings that connected, Calista's young mind was at once more simplified and more complex; when the furor of her motions faded enough for him to concentrate, he found himself envisioning a dark, circular room which he stood at the perimeter of. In the center, an image of Calista sat, with her knees drawn up under her chin, and her arms wrapped around them.

The image cut out abruptly; the real Calista had snapped her eyes shut again. But he had already made his choice; he had entered her mind already, and she knew it. It would be a waste to possibly squander her trust, and still know nothing from it. He placed his hands at the sides of her face, used his thumbs to open her eyelids.

They locked eyes again; this time, he anchored himself in her mind, so that she would not be able to shut him out if she closed her eyes again. He let go of her eyelids, but kept his hands cupped gently around her face.

The circular room swam back into view. He could a vision of her again, in the center. He tried to walk towards her, but he was bombarded suddenly by streams of vibrant colours weaving all around him. When he focused on one blur of colour, he realised that all of them were actually words; each stream of colour represented a phrase, or a sentence, that he found he could actually hear, if he focused on them.

The red and orange ones, when he focused on them, were spoken in a variety of different voices. There were some that he thought he recognized, some he did not.

Some of the voices seemed as if they must have come from the orphanage:

" _Freak. Why don't you talk? Are you stupid?"_

" _I don't think she understands much of anything."_

" _No one's ever going to adopt you, freak."_

" _I'll do whatever I want. What are you going to do, tell on me? Oh, that's right, you can't talk."_

" _She's not very bright, I'm afraid."_

And then there were other voices, that must have been from before she was in the orphanage.

" _We can't keep her here. Having her here puts us all at risk."_

" _She's only a child. I couldn't just leave her there."_

" _She was using Unforgivable curses on her own child...and if she's Bellatrix's daughter, then she's related to me, too. It's my responsibility to help her."_

There was a heartwrenching moment, for Severus, when he heard the echo of Lily's voice:

" _Something's wrong with her. I think she might be ill. It's unnatural for a child to be so quiet…"_

Another blur of colour came at him, still reds and oranges, but these ones were all in the same voice. It was as if Bellatrix was there, in her mind, her haughty, cold voice echoing.

" _Look at them; they are dead, as they should be."_

" _I will not listen to so much as a whimper of protest from you. You will learn that little girls do not question their mothers and go unscathed."_

" _You will serve the Dark Lord; it is what you are born to do."_

" _Say it! Say it, or I will turn the wand on you."_

" _Give Mama the wand. Pick it up, do it now!"_

" _If you fail to please the Dark Lord, I will kill you myself, make you a sacrifice. It will be a small loss."_

" _Idiot girl!_ Crucio!"

On and on these streams of colours and words went, all in the same vein. With some of them, he saw flashes of images; saw Bellatrix aiming her wand, saw the light go out of the eyes of a stranger, as life left him. It was like being a Death Eater all over again, seeing all the things that Calista had witnessed.

Finally, the reds retreated, faded. He found that he was closer to the center of the room now, that the reds and oranges still echoed and swirled all around the room, but they were behind him. Now, the colours were shades of blue. The voice was a child's voice, very soft and utterly unfamiliar. Still, he knew in an instant that it was her voice, Calista's voice, that he was hearing.

" _No, I won't do it. I don't care what you say."_

" _If I can't do anything, then at least I can't do something bad."_

" _Stop, please stop!"_

" _Stay away from me!"_

" _Go on and kill me, then."_

" _Leave me alone."_

" _You'd hate me too, if you knew..."_

" _No one can find out, it's not safe."_

The longer he listened, the more words there were, as if her mind had been filled to the brim with all of the things she never said, and the pressure was being released just in time.

He focused on the blue streams of colour, and the words kept coming.

" _I'm not stupid!"_

" _I don't believe anything you tell me anymore."_

" _Lies. Everything you say is a lie."_

" _I hate you! Go away!"_

" _I don't want to be like you!"_

Like before, the words kept coming, on and on. When they finally faded, he found that he was even closer to where the image of Calista sat, huddled, in the center of the room.

A final rush of colours came streaming at him, these ones greens and yellows. He was startled to hear his own voice in all of these streams, repeating all the things he had said to her over the last few months.

" _I won't hurt you."_

" _Would you like me to read to you from the book again?"_

" _I will give you something that will let you sleep without dreams."_

" _I would like you to ask permission before taking any more of my books."_

" _Would you like to stir the cauldron?"_

" _I wish you would speak to me."_

" _Do you trust me?"_

" _Calista."_

" _Calista."_

" _Calista."_

Her name, spoken in his voice, echoed all around him, slowly quieting as he passed through them. Finally, all of the colours were swirling around behind him; he was very near to the center of the room now, and he closed the short distance now between him and the image of Calista.

His dream-self, if that was what you would call it, lifted the child's chin, cupped her face, and peered into her eyes, the same way he did with the flesh-and-blood Calista that was before him.

Here, another layer into her mind, there were thick threads of emotion, each anchored to an imaginary ground at one end, the other ends floating free, weaving in and out of each other. He reached for the closest thread, found that it consisted of that terrible, cold rage that he had felt roll off her when she first woke from both of her nightmares. As he held into that thread of emotion, it revealed memory after memory, each of them interlaced with that rage, and most of them with knots of fear, too.

" _Stupid girl. Useless child. The Dark Lord will never be impressed with you, the pitiful way you act." Bellatrix's eyes glared, glittering with certain madness._ " _I don't want to impress your Dark Lord," Calista replied hotly, and before the words had left her mouth, Bellatrix had slapped her across the face, hard enough to send the child stumbling backwards. Her cheek ached and stung, but she would not give Bellatrix the pleasure of seeing her cry. She set her jaw firmly, screwed her eyes shut against a threatening flood of tears, and imagined returning the strike, leaving her own mark on Bellatrix's pasty cheek._

_Calista was crying; Bellatrix grabbed her roughly, forced her to look down. "Look at them," she commanded, "They're dead, as they should be." Calista didn't want to look, but Bellatrix slapped her. When she tried to turn away, her mother's hands were on her again, forcing her to look. "They'd take your magic if they could."_

_The helpless man writhed in agony, as Bellatrix pointed her wand at him, her eyes dark with concentration, her face contorted by a frighteningly cold grin. A few times, she shook the wand in emphasis, and the man screamed, splitting the still night sky with sounds of sheer agony. Calista wanted to look away, but she knew it would make Bellatrix angrier, would cause worse visions than she would be spared by turning away. Calista's stomach felt hollow and her head swam as Bellatrix turned, and placed the wand into her own small hand. "I will cast the spell," Bellatrix said, "You point the wand. Point it at the wretched filthy creature. Calista's eyes locked on the man, and he stared at her with wide brown eyes. "Please… help… me…" he beseeched, and Calista was frightened and disgusted by the sight of him, the spittle dripping from his chin, the way he crawled on the ground. Then she looked up into her mother's face, and she felt sicker. The eyes glittered with a malicious pleasure, and her face was lit by madness. "Point the wand," Bellatrix urged, "Do it now." Calista closed her eyes and yanked her hand away from her mother's icy grip. She couldn't stand this, any of it. She hated her mother, she hated the pathetic man on the ground, she hated herself._

_Calista sat hunched over on a small, uncomfortable bunk, a book cradled in her lap. She was so absorbed in what she was reading that she was caught off-guard, didn't notice the two light-haired girls tiptoeing into the room, until it was too late. One of the girls grabbed a fistful of Calista's dark hair and pulled as hard as she could, and the other girl spit in Calista's face as she was pulled backwards by the first girl. The first girl shoved the book aside, and Calista saw, as if in slow motion, the book's pages separating from the cover and settling in a disorganized pile on the ground. "Freak!" the taller of the two girls, both of whom looked older than Calista, shrieked, "Stupid dirty black-eyed freak!" The second girl stomped on Calista's hand and leaned into her face, yelling along with the first girl. "Why don't you talk, freak? Why don't you tattle on us? Are you too scared? Are you scared they'll kick you out of here and make you live by yourself on the street, where freaks belong?"_

" _Look at me, you wretched child. Look at me, let me see what traitorous thoughts are in your head." Bellatrix leered at Calista, pushing the small child against the wall and staring into her eyes. Calista shut her eyes, and Bellatrix slapped her, sending her head reeling against the wall. She saw stars, felt herself fight to stay conscious, but she knew she had to, if she was to keep her mother out of her thoughts. She concentrated on clearing her mind, on keeping all of the things she wanted to shout at her mother behind an imaginary shield, schooled her expression into remaining blank. She must have done a good job, because Bellatrix loosened her grip and stalked away, leaving Calista feeling weak and drained from the effort of maintaining her mental barrier._

Severus was finding it exceedingly difficult to wade through horrific memory after horrific memory, all in a row; desperately, he seized on a tendril that waved nearby that seemed gentler. He didn't know precisely what to describe it as; it wasn't an emotion so much as it was a bittersweet, melancholy sort of confusion.

_A table swam into view, a round wooden table, and around it were familiar faces. Sirius Black, Remus Lupin, James and a pregnant Lily Potter all stared at Calista. Each wore a grim expression, and Potter raised his voice slightly as he addressed Black. "She can't stay here. She's got to go back to her mother. It's too risky to keep her with any of us, it could lead Voldemort straight to us." Black slammed his fist on the table, and snarled at his best friend. "She's related to me, too, and I can't just let Bellatrix torture her. She's still a child, James! We can't just give her back." He glanced at Calista, who was intently studying the tabletop, for fear of revealing her expression to any of the strangers who sat there discussing her as if she wasn't in the room. Lily leaned towards Calista and asked softly if she was hungry. Even though she was, she didn't trust herself to answer without suddenly crying, and she didn't want any of these strange people to see her cry. Lily kept speaking softly to her, and Calista stared at her rounded belly. She heard Lily talk about expecting her own child, and Calista suddenly wished strongly that this pretty, soft-spoken red-haired lady was her mother, instead of Bellatrix. She had no siblings, and her mother never spoke to her kindly, never asked if she wanted anything, not like this lady was asking. Calista was certain that this woman would never torture a man to death, would never hand Calista her wand, insisting that she do the same. Then the black-haired man with glasses that sat next to her said something to the lady, and she turned away. Soon, she put Calista to bed on a sofa in the next room, expected her to go to sleep, even though Calista was scared and hungry, and she didn't know where she was or who these people were._

Severus felt, suddenly, exactly the same as the emotion this memory had been tied to; a melancholy confusion, a hollow yearning for this to be something more than what it was. He knew what it was to want Lily, when she was wrapped upon her own separate life, even if he had wanted her in an entirely different way.

He had to move on, though. Regretfully, he let the image go, searched for the next important-looking thread; there. It was a thick tendril of emotion, and it weaved in and out of almost every other thread he could see. Smaller threads branched off of it, touching nearly all of her memories. He took hold of it, followed it.

This was different; Holding on to this thread was encapsulating, all-invading. Here was the sense of animal fear that he had glimpsed behind her eyes, in the way that her body would alternately go rigid, or tremble uncontrollably. This was an instinctual, persistent sense of terror, and the images it revealed were far more disturbing than he ever could have imagined.

They were different in another way, too. Where all of the memories he had seen so far had a logical, picture-like quality to them, these came in jolts and bursts, many without real words or pictures at all.

These memories were raw and wild, and they connected in a brutal, forceful way.

_Cold hands wrapped around hers, forcing her to hold the wand; "Crucio!" and now the man was writhing, screaming, his eyes bulging. Her vision blurred with tears; her mother paused, released the spell long enough to make sure that Calista was still watching. The man begged and pleaded, but Bellatrix turned the wand on him again, anyway._

" _See what happens when you don't mind your mother? You see? You're next, you're next, and I will offer your blood to the Dark Lord in sacrifice if you don't learn to love him as I do…"_

" _He will use you, no matter what you say or do. He will use you alive, he will use you dead. That is what you are here for. That is why I gave you life."_

_Disobey. She disobeys again because she can't do it; can't do what it is that her mother wants her to . She lifts her wand, and the little girl's world turns black and red, pulsing violently._

_Screaming, but it won't stop. Agony, everywhere. Her eyes, her hands, every nerve in her body is on fire. She feels a thousand hot knives stabbing her, twisting serrated blades into every muscle, every bone._

_She wants to sleep, she wants to die, but the agony is in control, won't release her. Cannot stop it, her throat raw from screaming and now her mouth is open but there is no voice left inside of her. It hurts, it hurts so badly…_

_The flash of a silver blade, and her feet won't carry her away fast enough. The searing of fire, white-hot. Anything, anything but this._

_Cold hands grip her, slap her, press into her skin hard enough to leave marks, but it doesn't matter; she must run away anyway, no matter how angry it makes her mother. Except, she can't move, now. Paralyzed, and then something like ice but a thousand times more painful, cutting into the skin of her back; she snaps out of the spell, tried to run again. Cold fingers dig into her shoulder, another curse comes. Then, the cold pain again, and again, and again._

_Heat spreads across her back now, too; she gets free again, turns her head, and then she screams. She can see blood,_ her _blood, in big drops all over the floor, all over the white skin of her mother's hands._

And that was where this thread of terrible fear ended; here, in this memory of pain and blood. It was a good thing that he had reached the end of it, because he didn't think he could bear to see any more.

Slowly, he rose from the depths of her subconcious, until he stood again in the little room just behind her feeble barrier, the outermost layer of her mind. He was still kneeling in front of the image of his daughter, hands on either side of her cheekbones; he dropped his hands from her face, and his dream-self that he had projected into her mind pulled the dream-Calista close, wrapping her in an embrace.

He ignored the trembling of her body, continued to hold her close even when she tried to run away. He simply held her tight, wordlessly, and used the power of his own mind, his legilimency skill to create a small, tight barrier that shielded them both from the dark memories beneath the surface, Then, slowly and carefully, he let the projection of himself fade from her mind, withdrew the anchor he had placed. He left the barrier, and then he pulled a tiny tendril of her into his mind, so that he could stay connected, could keep that barrier intact. It was like taking her dream-self's hand, holding onto it.

When at last Severus emerged from her memories, his hands slid down her face, her neck, and then he pulled her tightly to him in an embrace, much as he had done with her inner self, inside the outer layer of her mind.

Just as she had done in her mind, she trembled and strained to pull away, but he would not let her go. He held onto her, and when tears began to fall involuntarily from her eyes, he laid her head gently against his shoulder, and he held her there until the tears subsided, and neither of them spoke for a long time.

Gradually, the tension left her body, the trembling subsided. He didn't know if she had stopped being afraid, or if she simply didn't have the energy to fight him anymore.

Once she was calm, he loosened his grip on her slightly, and peered over her shoulder as he pushed the material of her nightdress aside, revealing her back.

He dreaded what he would see, but he forced himself to look, to find the spot that had bled and felt cold in Calista's darkest memories.

There, halfway down her back, he saw that someone had hacked at the child's skin, had used a blade to carve a crude replica of the Dark Mark across her spine. Perhaps, to an uneducated eye, it would have been difficult to make out the image, but he had the Dark Mark permanently branded into his forearm; he deciphered the pattern cuts and slashes for what it was instantly.

This was worse than he ever could have imagined. With the Dark Mark carved into her skin, even a counterfeit one, it would not be difficult for Voldemort to use it to find her, if he ever returned to power and decided to take Bellatrix up on her offer of a sacrifice. And even if he didn't, even if he never came back, but Bellatrix did, she'd still be in danger. Bellatrix had done exactly what she'd set out to do, by carving this mark in her daughter's skin; they were connected, now. If Bellatrix ever managed to get out of Azkaban, she'd be able to find her daughter for certain.


	5. Golden Silence

 

Severus stayed with Calista until she fell asleep. He held onto the little piece of her mind that he had taken into his, used it as a bridge into her psyche, so that he could maintain the barrier he had placed between her normal, waking mind, and the horrors that lurked just beneath the surface, haunting her.

It was taxing, draining, to keep such a barrier erected in the mind of another person. It wasn't as simple as expending a set amount of energy to build the barrier and then simply leaving it in place, but it required a constant influx of effort to maintain.

Like an infection, it was a foreign substance, one that the host wanted to be rid. The next layer of her mind, the one that he was trying to block out, was pushing to get back in, seeping around the edges of the shield he'd erected. He had to keep adjusting it, feeding it, to keep it intact.

If he had been less certain of her skills, he never would have attempted it; if he hadn't been able to maintain it at a precise strength, the weight of her memories could have crushed it, and there was no telling what would happen if they all rushed in and bombarded her at once.

There was a reason why every book on the subject of legilimency carried strong cautions about trying to alter things in someone else's mind; Modifying someone's memory was always tricky at best, and in a case where a legilimens was manipulating the way the mind naturally operated, there was a high risk.

It was a very temporary measure, just to give her a chance to rest, to sleep, without the burden of those dark memories. While she slept, he had some hours to try and determine what to do now that he knew the depth of trauma that she had experienced. Where would they go from here? It didn't seem as though things could continue in their old way, with her a silent shadow of a child, and he merely trying to appease the consequences of what Bellatrix had done.

Now that he could see the complete picture, the timeline that had led Calista to this point, he understood that she was in a kind of suspended animation; unable to go forward with such a heavy burden weighing her down, yet unable to go back and change what had happened, she simply blockaded herself away behind a blank expression, hoping only to survive each day.

She couldn't go back, change what had been, but perhaps Severus could change what she remembered of it. It was his first instinct, when he emerged from the depths of her mind. He wanted to reach back into her mind, pull out all of her painful, frightening memories, and let her start fresh, without their burden.

Once Calista was asleep, Severus went down to his workroom to consider it further. He found it easier to think when he was surrounded by his familiar rows and rows of jars, bottles, and vials. They were arranged, always, in perfect order, and somehow, that made it easier to organise his thoughts as well.

He considered the landscape of Calista's mind carefully. It wasn't the same as an adult's mind; it was not as multi-layered, not as compartmentalised. Part of that was her age; her mind wasn't fully developed, so its system of organisation wasn't as sophisticated yet as an adult's. Part of it, too, and part of the problem he considered now, was that, as her mind was still forming, it was being shaped by her memories.

Not only would it be a highly nuanced and complex process to attempt to remove an individual memory which might branch off into a thousand other memories, might be embedded in several areas of her mind at once, but her mind had literally grown around some of those memories; to remove them could possibly change who she was.

It was possible that removing the memories could simply allow her to be the child she would have been all along, had she been raised in a loving, safe home, but it was equally probable that removing such a critical volume of memories would leave so many holes in her mind that it would be permanently damaged.

This wasn't to say that modifying her memory would be impossible; only that it would be very, very difficult, and require a great deal of care. Still, he couldn't even consider such a thing until he had really analysed the contents of her mind, until he truly understood the ways in which all of her varied puzzle pieces fit together. That way, he could ensure that, if he removed certain memories, he could make the rest of her mind fit together correctly, leave her with a picture that still at least appeared complete. The mind generally knew when it had been tricked, and it could sometimes refuse to cooperate.

If only Severus had known her at the time that her mutilation at the hands of Bellatrix had occurred - firstly, he could have prevented it, but even if he hadn't been able to, if he had met her the day after, or the week after, or perhaps even a month after it had happened, he could have removed just that single memory. The rest of it, he believed, she could heal from, given enough time in a safe environment, enough care and support around her.

But he hadn't been there then, and that memory, her worst memory, had been melted and moulded into the very fibre of her psyche, had been allowed to weave its sinister threads all throughout her mind. Extracting it now would be an immense job.

At any rate, it was plain to Severus that Calista needed to heal, regardless of whether he could remove her worst memory or not. With it or without it, she was still incredibly damaged emotionally. She would need a long time, perhaps years, in an environment where she felt safe, where she felt comfortable; and she needed  _someone_ , or perhaps a group of someones, that she could trust. But what Severus sensed that she needed more than anything was incredibly simple, and also incredibly hard to come by: love.

Severus paced through the workroom, all the while concentrating simultaneously on analysing what he'd seen in his daughter's mind, and on keeping the barrier in her mind intact. It did make thinking more difficult, keeping so much of his concentration elsewhere, but it seemed necessary to give her some peace after the dual traumas of her nightmare and of his own albeit well-intentioned intrusion into her mind.

So, he mused, he knew the contents of the memories that plagued her, knew what emotions ruled her mind, knew so much more about her than he had only hours ago. But he sensed that there were still other answers to be had from what he'd seen in her mind, answers that might somehow tell him what on earth he should do next.

His biggest problem was that she did not trust him, would not willingly take his help no matter how badly she needed it. He felt that he had seen  _something_ in her mind that was tickling at him now, some conclusion he should have drawn, or memory he should have looked at the edges of, a puzzle piece he'd thus far been missing that would help them connect.

He considered what he had seen. For a start, he had been absolutely correct in assuming that she had a natural talent for Occlumency. It had been clear when he entered her mind, for he'd had to brush a barrier aside. It had been a weak barrier, little more than gossamer; but it was more than some adults he had met had to protect their minds. And, as weak as the barrier had seemed to him, it appeared from Calista's memories that it had effectively stopped Bellatrix from seeing into her daughter's mind. Bellatrix did have some skill in the art of Legilimency, but so far as he knew, she could not perform it wandlessly; perhaps it was only this distinction that had saved Calista's secrets from discovery by her mother…

But then, that was another question he had to work through. Most of what Calista had been hiding from him were things that had been done at her mother's hands; certainly, Bellatrix was aware of all of these memories, so precisely what had Calista been trying to hide from Bellatrix?

Severus had heard Calista's own voice in her mind, so he knew that she could speak, that it was even likely that she did speak now, when no one was around to hear her. Certainly some of the things he'd heard her say in her mind seemed like things that she would have said since coming to live with him, or at least since being placed in the orphanage. Perhaps it was logical to assume that she didn't want him, Severus, to know that she could speak, but Bellatrix had obviously already known that, since he had seen them arguing.

Severus had seen the potential in Calista's mind for her to develop, someday, as a strong Occlumens; perhaps this was what she was hiding? But it didn't seem likely that the child even knew the potential was there, or she would have tapped into those reserves to protect herself. She had a strong mind, that was plain, and a strong mind was one of the critical components for becoming an Occlumens of any considerable skill, but when he'd entered her mind, he had not found even a shred of understanding about the art of Occlumency. She simply knew that when Bellatrix looked into her eyes, it had kept her safer to clear her mind, keep her face blank.

Severus fingered his wand in his pocket, thinking as he stared absently at the cauldron that lived on his basement worktop. It was almost as if…

As if she didn't even understand that Occlumency was a magical art at all.

And then, suddenly, he had it. He knew what else he had seen flitting among his daughter's memories, what she had been desperately trying to hide from Bellatrix at all costs, knew precisely what she was afraid that  _he_  would somehow find out. He couldn't help but chuckle darkly to himself; this was what had kept her so distant all these months?

It had been perplexing him, wondering why she didn't want to speak to him, why she carefully avoided him most of the time, why she would look at him blankly whenever they were close to connecting. At first, he'd assumed that she disliked him, the way she seemed to dislike nearly everyone she'd ever been in close contact with, but that wasn't at all the picture he'd gotten from her mind.

Although it had been jarring to hear his own voice replaying inside her mind, he'd gotten a distinctly positive feeling from it; he'd felt a tinge of warmth in those words, gotten quite a different impression entirely - that Calista actually  _did_  like him, or was as close to liking him as she knew how to get. And that was why he couldn't understand why she was so loathe to allow him to get any closer to her, to allow for even the tiniest spark of trust to ignite between them.

When he thought of it now, in light of what he had just realised, it explained a great many things, little thorns of ideas that he had felt in her mind and not quite been able to decipher at first glance.

There was the terror she'd felt when bidden to grip Bellatrix's wand and cast along with her mother. She'd been horrified at what Bellatrix was doing, wanted Calista to do, but there had been something else that had not quite made sense to him at first, a fear that this moment would be the one convinced Bellatrix to make good on her threats to offer the child as a sacrifice to the Dark Lord, nothing more than a component of a bloody ritual.

There was, too, the way that she'd snapped to attention once when they were reading from his red book, the way she pored over it herself when he'd caught her in his study that day, eyes roving across the pages with a dedication bordering on desperation, as if the book had some answer that she desperately needed.

Being placed in the Muggle ward of the orphanage hadn't helped her, either. Belatedly, he realised that she'd seen this only as proof of something she'd already suspected, already been afraid of.

Severus allowed himself a small smile. Well, now that he had considered the things he'd seen in Calista's mind, considered the way that she thought, the way she truly felt about him…

Now, he had a plan.

**(¯ˆ·.¸¸.·ˆ¯)**

Calista breathed evenly, feeling as untroubled as she ever had. She dreamt, on and off, but none of them were unbearable; only the hint of a shadow, here and there, kept her sleep from being perfectly peaceful. The dark things, the bad places in her mind, tried to eke into her dreams, but something was keeping them back. To Calista, it was like a big, shiny gold wall, a magical castle protecting her.

And it was fitting, wasn't it? Sleepily, in between dreams, she marvelled at it. This man, with dark eyes like hers, who was something to her - was her father, he said - first he had brought her to the big castle on the hill to live, sheltered from the mean girls at the orphanage, and even, she could almost believe, sheltered from her mother, since Calista had not seen a sign of her here. And then he had created this other castle, much smaller but just as strong, inside her mind. Except that this castle wasn't holding her in - it was holding the bad things  _out_.

But why would he do that, for her? She didn't understand why he did most of what he did. Making sure she ate, slept some, generally stayed healthy, that was easy to figure out - if something bad happened to her before the right time, she couldn't be given to the Dark Lord. That was what Bellatrix had always said. But it was puzzling, the rest of it - reading to her, letting her help him make potions - and she worked it around in her mind a little bit, eventually drifting into a dream, one she thought she had had before, where he came to rescue her from the orphanage.

But, she thought, half-waking again, that had really happened, hadn't it? It must have, or she wouldn't be here. It didn't surprise her that he had wanted to take her - people were always taking her, and she could never figure out why, so she'd stopped trying, simply accepted that when she was taken somewhere new, she had to be on her guard, had to be sure that she didn't let any of the people get too close to her.

That had never really been difficult for her, keeping people at a distance. Bellatrix had made sure of that, early on, and now it was second nature. Except, a few times, in that cheery little house where she had been taken after the orphanage. The pretty lady, Lily, and the quiet man, Remus, had both disarmed her. She'd wished, more than once, that she could have spoken to them, could have found something to say that would make them like her, make them think of her in the way that they'd clearly thought of the baby boy.

But that would have been dangerous, she knew. It was probably just like that James had said, they wanted her to talk so they'd know how much she was going to tell Bellatrix if they let her go. Well, she wouldn't have told Bellatrix anything, even if she could have, because by then she'd already decided that talking only ever got her in trouble.

And now this man with his castles… her father. He was kind to her, too kind. Perhaps it was as she originally had thought, that he was being nice so she would forget to be afraid, and then he could catch her when she wasn't expecting it, make her try to hurt someone, which she wouldn't - couldn't, if she'd wanted to, anyway - do. Except, when she thought about it, she couldn't remember ever seeing him hurting anyone. Of course, she didn't know what he did all day, when he left her alone in the flat, but he never came back with blood on his robes, never looked at her in that glinty way where she knew that she was going to be hurt, never pointed his wand at her, not even once. He never even came in ranting about Mudbloods and blood traitors, spitting with rage.

Perhaps he simply made potions all day, in some other place. Maybe even somewhere else in the big castle; there had to be a hundred rooms, more even. Maybe that was how he hurt people - maybe he gave them potions that made them sick, or caused them pain. She wished she'd thought of that before now, she would have been careful not to drink anything that he gave her. But then again, she  _had_  been drinking things, and nothing bad had happened so far…

But then she remembered that something bad  _had_  happened, just this very night. It was hard to remember, with the shiny golden castle wall in her head, and she was tired. She wanted to let herself go back to sleep, enjoy the relative peace she had felt ever since the wall had appeared in her mind. She almost did it, too, almost surrendered to her tired body and mind, almost drifted away again. But then there was a dark little tickle somewhere at the edge of her mind; a seeping darkness, and she saw the flash of a knife, felt the pounding of fear in her heart. And then, like some kind of benevolent snake, a bit of the shiny wall lashed out, wrapped itself around the darkness, pulled it back, and Calista forgot why she had been afraid, only remembered that she had been.

But it reminded her, that shiny wall with its reaching, shielding arms. It reminded her how it had gotten there in the first place. The man, her father, had been inside her mind, looking at all of her memories, stealing all of her secrets. But that would mean…

That would mean that he  _knew_ , Calista realised with a start. He knew the thing that she was afraid for anyone to know, the thing that she had kept from everyone else for so long. He was probably thinking about it right now, angry that she had tricked him, disappointed that he had gone through all the trouble to take her, and now she was useless. Probably any minute now, he was going to march in here, and he  _would_  go all glinty-eyed, and tell her to leave, right now. Maybe he would send someone to take her somewhere else, now.

She felt her heart speed up again, opened her eyes. Yes, that was what would certainly happen. and what if… what if the person he sent to come and get her was her mother? What if she had to go back and live with her again, and even worse, what if he  _told her secret to her mother_? Maybe she should just leave now, pick up her book, take her clothes from the wardrobe, and just run away, before anyone had the chance to take her somewhere…

Just then, another golden tendril came out of the wall, plucked the seed of her fear right out of her thoughts, tucked it somewhere far away. Calista felt her heart slow again; she took a deep breath, and before she had even let it out, she was sound asleep.


	6. "The mind is full of traps"

 

Severus waited until it was fully light outside to return to his daughter's bedroom, until he judged she'd gotten several hours of good sleep. He himself was exhausted, because he couldn't sleep while maintaining the barrier in her mind, and he had classes to teach in two hours. He would push himself through his classes, because he had promised Dumbledore that having Calista here would not interfere with his teaching schedule, and if that caused him to be a bit less patient than usual with his students, well, it was the first-year Gryffindors first thing this morning anyway, and the dunderheads probably deserved it.

He wished he didn't have to wake her; she looked so peaceful, childlike just as she had when he'd given her the sleeping potion. But he couldn't possibly keep shielding her while he taught his classes all day, and he did have to sleep eventually. Besides, there were several things that he needed to communicate to her, and he hoped that he would simply be able to tell them to her now, this morning, before he left her in the flat for the day.

Gently, he pulled some of the protective wall back into his own mind. It felt a bit like blood rushing back into a limb that had fallen asleep, and he had to let his mind settle before he could continue. Carefully, one piece at a time, he dismantled the whole wall, pulling it back into himself. He hadn't moved the memories, had only hidden them from the view of her conscious mind, but even so, it wouldn't be wise to overwhelm her mind with too much at once.

It took perhaps an hour to extract himself from her mind entirely; at the end, he returned the tiny piece of her mind that he had held onto as an anchoring point. Already, in those minutes, he could see her sleep becoming fitful, saw her fingers clench and unclench restlessly.

"Calista," he said softly, touching her shoulder gently.

She started awake, suddenly enough to make him jump, too. She gasped, and edged backwards, pressing her back against the headboard, shrinking away from him.

"Calista, it's all right," he said, frankly quite pleased with himself for sounding as patient as he did, when he was so drained from the night of guarding her sleep. "I'm not going to hurt you," he told her, for what felt like the thousandth time. She didn't believe him any more this time than any other time. He saw the blankness in her eyes, the tension in all of her muscles, that told him that.

He waited, giving her time to wake up fully, to relax, but the latter seemed out of her reach. She looked tense from head to toe, as if she were simply waiting for the right opportunity to dart around him, bolt from the room. Perhaps that was exactly what she was planning on, for he noticed her eyes flitting between him and the open doorway beyond him.

"Would you like to have breakfast now?" he tried. She tore her eyes away from the doorway, and shook her head  _no_.

He sighed. He didn't know how much longer he could keep this up. She was like a feral animal, all wide eyes and racing heart, and he had never had the patience to tame anything. Pet cat, frog, or owl? He used cats' eyes and frog livers in potions, and a large part of the appeal of a teaching job at Hogwarts was the owlery, where he could let someone else feed his damn bird.

Still, he'd come up with a plan, last night, and his best option at this point still seemed to be to go forward with it. There were several things that he needed to tell her, and then, once she processed those, he wanted to show her what Legilimency and Occlumency were, party to allay the ridiculous fear he had uncovered through his musings the prior night, and partly so she would understand what had happened between them, when he'd entered her mind and guarded it.

"Calista, there are some things you need to understand," he said carefully. She looked down at the cover on her bed, as if it were the one addressing her now. He paused, hoping that she would look up at him, but of course she did not.

"You don't need to be afraid, anymore," he told her, "I should have told you before… It never occurred to me that you wouldn't know..."

He stopped. He had been about to remind her, verbally, that he'd forced his way into her mind, had combed through her secrets. But it appeared that she'd inferred the rest of his sentence, anyway; her eyes flicked up to him, with the same icy, insolent glare that he remembered from the very first time he'd ever seen her face, at the orphanage. She was angry with him, perhaps rightfully so, but he hoped that the first bit of news he had to give her would alleviate that, at least somewhat.

"Your mother - Bellatrix - she's locked away, Calista. She was caught torturing someone, and she's been put in prison."

For a moment, the child was very, very still. Then, the rage in her eyes shifted, was replaced by blankness once more.

"Do you understand what I'm telling you?" he asked, puzzled by her reaction, "Bellatrix is in Azkaban. She can't hurt you."

Her expression didn't change.

"Calista?"

She shook her head,  _no_ , and then her expression lit up with one of the last things he'd expected: disbelief. Her eyes widened, and the bridge of her nose wrinkled up disdainfully.

She thought he was lying to her.

"Calista," he said tiredly. He wished he'd been able to sleep before this conversation; wished he could go to bed after it, instead of into a classroom full of snot-nosed eleven-year-olds. "What could I possibly have to gain by lying to you about this?"

The look she gave him now was a challenge; the same one she'd given him when he'd first announced his intentions to adopt her from the orphanage. Evidently, she thought he'd stand to gain plenty by lying to her. Still, he would take this obvious disbelief over her blank stare. It was something; it showed she was engaged, one some level, with what he was saying.

"It's true," he reassured her, "She's serving a life sentence. The Ministry has no intention of letting her out."

For just a second, he saw a flicker of hope flit across her features, and then it had guttered out, to be replaced with an expression, once again, of wary disbelief.

So much for his master plan. He shook his head.

"I have to go now, I'm late for work… I'll have breakfast sent to the flat for you, all right? I'll explain more when I get back."

He made to leave, then paused in the doorway, looked over his shoulder at the small girl, still huddled at one end of her bed. He'd almost forgotten.

"Ah, and please don't try to run away while I'm gone."

**(¯ˆ·.¸¸.·ˆ¯)**

When he had gone, Calista tiptoed into the kitchen. Well, he had sent her up something for breakfast, that much was true at least. She picked up a corner of toast, sniffed at it suspiciously. What if he'd had it poisoned? She shouldn't eat any of it, now that the thought had occurred to her.

Her stomach rumbled. Well… perhaps she could eat just a bit, see if it made her feel sick. She considered for a moment, and then climbed onto one of the wooden chairs. She started with the toast, but once she had finished that, she was still hungry. With a little help from her belly, she decided that he probably wouldn't try to poison her, even if he had found out the bad thing. He could have poisoned her a hundred times before now, and he hadn't, so he must have some other plan. She finished her breakfast, and then went back into her room.

She lit the candelabra in her bedroom. It could be done with a wand, or by pressing a little brass knob that was set into its base. After she pressed the knob, she took her ratty little book off the top of her wardrobe, along with a quill that she kept in the top drawer, and sat down on her bed with the book in her lap.

She opened it, flipping through the pages. They were mostly filled with her own childish scrawl, but a few pages here and there were still blank. She stopped on one of these blank pages, and set the quill to it, scribbling furiously as she worked things out in her mind.

She had meant to run away today. She'd forgotten about it, until he'd told her that lie about her mother. For a minute, she'd almost believed him; she wanted to, badly. But she knew better. Bellatrix would never get caught. She was too smart for that. Calista had seen her torture dozens of people, had seen her intercepted by Aurors and by the Order of the Phoenix, and no one had ever caught her. She always got away cleanly, somehow.

And when he'd told her that, she realised why he'd said it. He had looked into her mind, had stolen her thoughts. He knew that she was afraid of Bellatrix, was afraid that he was going to give her back to Bellatrix and tell her what Calista really was. That was probably where he was right now, she thought, fetching Bellatrix to come round and collect her. And she was just sitting here, belly full and right where he expected her to be. They were probably coming back any minute now, both of them together.

Except that didn't quite ring true, because he left at the same time on many mornings, so he probably really  _was_  going to work. And she was fairly certain that she hadn't seen him before he came to get her at the Orphanage, hadn't seen him among Bellatrix's group of friends and fellow Dark Lord worshippers.

But then, maybe she  _had_  seen him. She thought that she'd dreamt of him before. What if those weren't dreams? What if she had met him, and he'd gone into her mind just like he did last night, and made her think that it had only been a dream. Could a person even do that? She wasn't sure, but she thought that if anyone could, it would be him.

She supposed she could run away, still. The castle had seemed so big when they'd walked through it, though. She wasn't sure she'd even be able to find her way out, and she definitely wouldn't know where to go next once she did get outside the castle.

He had asked her not to run away. Why had he done that? Did he have a plan to do something with her when he got back from wherever he was? Was he going to send someone round to collect her, take her away again, after all? Maybe he had told them where to find her and they would be angry if they came to find her and she wasn't here, anymore… but why would he tell her not to run away, then? Did he think she was daft? If he was going to send someone to take her away, then  _of course_  she was going to run away, first.

Unless… her eyes widened, and she looked up from her journal. Unless he  _wanted_  her to run away. Maybe he had some kind of awful monster waiting for her on the other side of the door to the flat, and he was waiting for her to try to leave so it could swallow her up. Maybe it was  _Bellatrix_ on the other side of the door, and he'd told her that she was locked up, and then asked her not to run away, precisely so that she would run away, and would be taken by surprise when Bellatrix was standing there, ready to bring her to the Dark Lord.

She furrowed her brow. What should she do? Should she wait here, and hope that he wasn't sending someone after her? Or should she run away, and hope that she didn't run straight into Bellatrix, or maybe a dragon?

She frowned. Maybe, just maybe, there was a tiny chance that none of this was right, that he really was just going to work, and that when he came home he would tell her more about her mother being in prison. Maybe he wasn't lying, maybe he really thought that she had been caught. Maybe Bellatrix was the one tricking both of them…

But, no. Bellatrix wasn't the one that had discovered her secret. It was  _him_. And even if the things she'd been afraid to even think about hoping for were true, even if he had cared about her a little bit, even if he'd liked teaching her about potions, that had all been before he'd looked inside her mind. She wanted to believe that perhaps he hadn't found the bad secret, but she knew better. She'd felt him poring over her thoughts, going through all of her memories. He knew. He had to know.

In the end, she stayed. She didn't know what else to do, really, and besides, whatever his intentions were in relation to her running away, he was alerted to her plan at any rate, so she couldn't do it, not today. She'd wait, then, see what happened next. One thing was for certain: she wouldn't listen to anything else he told her, not until she figured out what exactly it was that he wanted from her.

**(¯ˆ·.¸¸.·ˆ¯)**

Severus entered the flat just before dinnertime. A headache pounded at his temples. If he had been tired that morning, he was absolutely exhausted now, and two melted cauldrons and a fire had done little to improve his temper.

He went into his study first, and deposited a newspaper on the side table. He'd managed to scrounge up a copy of the issue that announced Bellatrix's arrest; he wanted to read it to her, later. Perhaps after dinner. Of course, he had to go through it again first, make mental notes of which parts to skim over. She'd seen what Bellatrix was capable of doing to other people, there was no point in rehashing the details of the torture with the poor child. Perhaps he should tear the picture out, too. He didn't know if it would trigger some of her bad memories to come lashing out in full force.

He looked in the kitchen. She wasn't there, but it looked like she'd eaten, so that was good, at least. Perhaps she'd calmed down since he'd left her this morning. Maybe she had used the day to process what he'd told her, accept that she wasn't in physical danger from Bellatrix any longer.

"Calista?" he called, and he was surprised to hear the strain in his own voice. It had been a long day, indeed. "It's time for dinner."

He cleared the breakfast dishes, summoned some dinner up from the kitchens. By the time Calista entered the kitchen, he had already set their plates and sat down. She entered cautiously, eyeing him warily; it was like the last several weeks had never happened. He began to wonder if he had imagined her tentative smile, the budding interest in potions that he'd seen in her eyes.

He ate, hoping food would restore some of his depleted energy; it didn't, not by much. He had not had time to eat lunch, because he'd been too busy tracking down the newspaper for Calista.

Calista, who, for her part, was sitting stonily across the table from him, fork still in place on the table, eyes cast down at a plate that it looked as if she had no intention of eating from.

"Eat," he commanded her, tiredly, "You're still nothing but skin and bones."

She looked up at him, searching his face; for what, he didn't know. He suspected that all she would find there, at the present moment, was exasperation. To his relief, she picked up her fork, stabbed it half-heartedly at her food, took a bite.

When he was nearly finished with his own dinner, she rose from her chair, avoiding his gaze. He looked across the table at her plate; it didn't like she'd eaten much more than that first forkful.

"Calista," he began, not even certain what he was going to say.  _Sit down and bloody eat, will you?_ , or perhaps  _Say something, damn it._  He sighed. He really was exhausted. Perhaps he should simply let her be tonight, try this again tomorrow.

He might have done just that, had she not sidestepped the table in such a particular way, darting around him as if  _he_  were the subject of her nightmares, instead of the one trying to find a way to spare her from them.

"Oh, for the love of Merlin," he said, setting his own fork down with a clatter, and rising from his chair. She made as if to run down the corridor, straight for her room

" _No_ ," he said, sternly, "Stay right there." He stormed into his study, picked up the newspaper, and before he'd had time to consider the wisdom of his actions, he whipped around the corner into the corridor, and thrust the newspaper in her direction.

Miraculously, she had done as he'd bid, and stayed where she was, until he'd practically leapt back into the corridor, brandishing a folded paper. She jumped back instantly; he stayed precisely where he was, holding the paper out. "Go on," he said, "Take it. You won't believe me; perhaps you'll believe the  _Daily Prophet_." Although, he thought darkly, at this rate, he wouldn't bet on it.

He could see curiosity warring with caution on her face. After several seconds, she slipped forward, took the paper quickly, and darted back a step. She eyed him warily, not taking her eyes off him long enough to even glance at the paper.

"I give you my word that I will stand right here, in this very spot, until you've finished reading," he said.

That didn't seem to convince her; she backed up two more steps before she finally unfolded the paper, lowered her eyes to read it.

Her eyes widened in shock; then, they roved across the pages rapidly, devouring the words, much like she'd done with his red-covered  _Theory of Magical Disciplines_  book, the day he'd caught her reading it in his study.

Too late, he wondered if he'd made a mistake; perhaps he'd acted too rashly in brandishing the paper at her. He didn't remember how much detail the article went into, and he  _did_  remember that Bellatrix looked positively deranged in the accompanying photograph. But he was so tired, and  _damn it_ , he was hurt too, when he thought about it. He'd done  _everything_ , everything he could think of for nearly five months to convince this child that he meant her no harm, and she still looked at him like he was a bloody dragon.

After several long minutes, Calista looked up. Her eyes were big and round, huge shadows in her small face.

"There's probably no point in my even saying this," he said, "But I am not in the habit of lying to you, and I don't intend to start."

There was a long pause, while they simply regarded each other, at opposite ends of the corridor. Then Severus sighed.

"I'm sorry if I gave you a shock by handing you that paper. I just wanted you to know, you don't have to be constantly wary of her jumping out of the shadows to snatch you up."

She stared at him, her expression still unchanging. She was still cautious, still tensed in case she need to move, fast.

"By the way," he said, not quite certain why he bothered, "I'm a professor. That's what I do all day. I teach children to brew potions… and, curiously, none of them are as frightened of me as you are, even though I have far less patience for them than I have for you. And  _if_  I wanted to poison you, don't you think I would have done so by now?"

And this,  _this_  of all things, she responded to. She relaxed her shoulders, cocked her head to the side, wrinkled her nose. After a brief pause, she straightened, and nodded.  _I suppose that makes sense_ , he could almost hear her saying.

Unbelievable. It had taken all of this, months of silence, of careful coaxing and bitten-back words, of gentle reasoning and soft responses, and the one time that she listened to what he had to say was when he'd gotten so frustrated he'd addressed her more or less like one of his students.

Must everything be a challenge with her?

As if  _she_  had read  _his_  mind, she drew herself up, and turned her back, dashing quickly into her room while he was distracted by his thoughts. Her door closed, softly but firmly.

And then, Severus chuckled, for the second day in a row.

 _Of course_ , he thought,  _A challenge._

At last, he thought he knew just what he needed to do to connect with her. He yawned. Tomorrow, though. After he'd gotten some bloody sleep.

**(¯ˆ·.¸¸.·ˆ¯)**

As soon as the last of his classes was over, he returned to his flat. Unsurprisingly, Calista was holed up in her room again. He knocked on her door twice, turned the knob, and pushed it open just a crack. "Kindly meet me in my study," he said, knowing she could hear him.

He went out first, settled in one of the two chairs; several minutes later, she arrived, face carefully blank. He motioned for her to sit in the other chair, and she complied, after a slight pause.

"I suppose you're angry with me for entering your mind, and looking through your memories."

She lifted her chin, glared at him.

"Have you ever tried to do it yourself, Calista?" he asked her, conversationally. "Enter someone else's mind?"

She raised her eyebrows, shook her head  _no_  in a manner that somehow managed, of all things, to be condescending."Well, I think you should," he said, matter-of-factly. "In fact, it's only fair, don't you think?"

He leaned forward. "I'm going to open part of my mind to you, and I'm going to put a secret of my own there. I won't just give it to you, though. You have to find it on your own."

She looked at him as if he were absolutely mental, folded her arms across her chest, and shifted further back into her own chair, distancing herself.

"I think you'll find," he said, "that if you try, you can reach out with your mind, right into mine."

This was the biggest gamble in his plan; he'd sensed a natural inclination in her mind, for both occlumency and legilimency, but she was still very young. Although she evidently could practise occlumency to some extent, there was a strong possibility that the latter would be completely out of her reach just now. Still, he thought the point he wanted to make would be even clearer if he could show her that she could do  _both_. And besides, he suspected that a challenge like this was precisely what she needed, in more ways than one.

For a long time, she only stared at him blankly, and he thought she wouldn't even try.

"Unless you think it's too difficult," he said, seemingly off-hand.

That earned him another icy glare; and then he could see her concentrating, watched her brow furrow.

He felt nothing, even though he was attuned to it, was waiting for her to try. He'd placed a barrier just inside the outer edge of his mind, and planted a few choice bits of information there.

He watched her carefully; she was trying, but nothing was happening. He supposed he shouldn't have been surprised; after all, it was an art that she was completely unaware of.

The point of this exercise wasn't to watch her struggle. He reached towards her with a tendril from his own mind, seeking hers out. He was surprised to find that it was absurdly easy to connect with her this time, even though he was a couple of metres away from her, wasn't even directly making eye contact, and still wasn't using his wand. He was skilled, to be sure, but it seemed too easy even for that to explain it. Perhaps it was because she was trying to reach him at the same time?

But no; she  _wanted_  to reach into his mind, certainly, but he could see that she had no idea where to start. He felt her bristle at his unexpected intrusion. In an action that was something like taking her hand, he plucked at a thread of her conscious mind, tugging it gently along with him. There was a point in the consciousness that one could reach through, if they knew where it was and how to do it. He guided her there, even as she tried to recoil from him. It was a bit like threading a needle, the way he showed her to slip through a tiny gap in her own mind, one she probably hadn't even realised was there.

He guided her as far as the gates to his own mind, and then he released her to find her own way. Nothing at first, and then, a sudden clattering against the barriers of his mind. He had erected a special barrier on the very outer edge of his mind, one that he'd judged would be challenging, but not impossible, for her to breach. It was strong, and would seem entirely impenetrable at first glance, but there was a weak spot in it, and if she truly had both the potential and the cleverness that would be necessary for her to learn legilimency, then she would find it.

After her initial haphazard attempt to push through the barrier, he felt her retreat slightly; then, he felt a curious, childlike exploration of the mental wall. She was poking at it, here and there, trying to determine the nature of it. All the while, he held her gaze as best he could; both so he could observe her process, and so she would have an easier time maintaining the connection.

Her little face was screwed up in concentration; her brow was furrowed, her nose wrinkled, mouth drawn up in a little bow. Her fists clenched at her sides, probably without her realising it. It was… well, if Severus had been forced to describe it, he would have begrudgingly called it cute. Luckily, he was under no such obligations.

After she had explored the barrier, tapping against it in a dozen different places, he felt her hit on a weak spot. The whole barrier appeared solid, but there were chinks. one of them was right in the spot where she was examining. He felt her excitement, seconds before she  _rushed_  at the weak spot, pushing a great deal of energy at trying to get through with brute force.

The wall pushed back, forcefully;  _You can't overpower me_ , he let the words light up in the forefront of his mind, so she could see them.  _You have to think_   _it through._

He felt her hovering just outside the barrier. Because she was inexperienced, he was able to predict her strategies based on clues in her own thoughts. There were ways a legilimens could conceal his or her presence in another's mind, but it was a very advanced magic; it would be years before he could even consider trying to teach her that.

He eavesdropped on her thought process, curious to see how she would solve this problem. He could feel a mixture of frustration and excitement emanating from her, as she tried to figure out how to breach the barrier.

Severus grew slightly impatient as the searching tendrils of Calista's mind prodded the same points in the barrier repeatedly. Because she could not guard her attempted intrusion yet, he knew that she was carefully searching the barrier section by section, and she was approaching it entirely wrong. He felt her pull away again, and then,  _finally_.

He sensed her examining the mental barrier as a whole again, instead of in parts. The barrier was like a chain-link fence, constructed with threads of interrelated thoughts running through the links so that she could not see through it. She plucked tentatively at the first set of strings that ran through the fence. These were useless, tedious thoughts, lists of ingredients for simple potions and trivia from various titles on his bookshelf. She would find nothing useful here.

She tried the next group of strings, and pulled away immediately, startled. This group of threads was thick and thorny; it carried the surface bitterness that he often used as a shield around himself. He was surprised how closely it resonated with parts of Calista's mind, now that he was examining them side-by-side.

After a while, Severus thought he had scared Calista away with the darkness of these fence-threads, but then he felt her again, pulling on another link in the chain.

When her mind brushed the secret to opening the barrier, he felt a small thrill; perhaps he had not overestimated her abilities. Perhaps she really could do this. She passed over this set of threads, tested a few more, and then returned to it again.

It was an intricately woven braid that when pushed against acted as a force field, keeping her away from whatever lay behind it. However, Calista discovered that when she  _pulled_  instead of  _pushed_  at the barrier, that it loosened from the rest of the fence. The only way to remove these sturdy threads from the fence was to pull them into herself, which she did.

Once the set of threads was entirely within her mind, they exploded with a shock that sent her away from his mind in a jolt. The threads formed words that echoed in the child's mind:

_Never pull anything into your own mind unless you are certain of its nature._

The warning he had woven into that particular set of threads exposed itself to her, and he waited until she came back, now peering cautiously through the holes in the fence left behind after she had removed the thick braid of thought from it. She rushed towards the barrier again in her excitement, and Severus pushed back at her, pushing more words into her mind.

_The mind is full of traps. When you throw all of your strength against them, they can destroy you in one blow._

There was another pause as she considered this information, and then a tendril of her thoughts snaked into the largest of the newly created holes in his barrier, before the rest of her probing thoughts slipped through.

She had done it; she'd found her way through the barrier he'd created. More importantly, he could feel that her mind was buzzing, alive, that she was fully engaged in this little game; and even if he hadn't felt it, he could  _see_  it plainly in her features. While her face was screwed up in concentration, her eyes were alight. He was immensely pleased with himself for coming up with this plan, for finally realising just how to reach her.

But the challenge was only half-finished. He felt her sorting through the words, feelings, and images that he had placed behind the barrier for her to find. He'd selected these carefully, and he monitored her reactions to them with interest.

There were images, memories of himself teaching in his dungeon classroom just down the hall from the flat they were in. He saw her register the authenticity in what he had said, when she saw these; she lingered with interest over a memory of himself delivering a lecture on the twelve uses of dragon's blood to a classroom full of first-years.

Next, she found his memory of himself going to Albus Dumbledore's office the day after Bellatrix was imprisoned, seeking information about her, Calista. He attached the emotion he'd felt that day, as he went to the address that was written on the slip of paper Dumbledore had given him. He could feel Calista's puzzlement; why had he been nervous?

She buzzed around that for a minute, followed it to his memory of seeing her face for the first time. She registered surprise at how much of a resemblance her face bore to his; she had never really noticed it before, never had much cause to study her own face in the mirror. He let her see, too, how he had instinctively liked her, felt drawn to help her. She considered this with the same confusion, flitted away from the memory, then returned to examine it again. He could feel, again, that she was perplexed.

There was another memory, a darker one. This was the one where he'd first woken her from a terrible nightmare, had seen the terror in her eyes, and had been willing to do nearly anything to take it away. He still was. He hoped she would pick up on that, but she was already past this memory, hastily leaving the image of herself, frightened, behind.

There was another memory of his, concerning her, that he allowed her to see. In this one, she flitted about in the storeroom adjoined to his potions workshop downstairs. She approached him, a jar of dried leaves held out proudly in her hands. A tiny smile spread over her features, just barely beginning to lift the shadows off of her face. She seemed surprised to see this image in his mind, and more than a little wistful, like it was something that was now out of reach.

And then she stumbled on the one thing that he particularly wanted her to see; a little package of thought, wrapped up in a protective bubble. This was another challenge for her, and he felt her approach it curiously. He felt her light upon it, and was pleased when she approached it slowly, cautiously, sending only part of herself to investigate it. Immediately, she began searching for threads similar to those in the barrier, but this safeguard was entirely different. It was like a thick, dense fog that she could not penetrate, and so she retreated again for a few moments before returning, partially withdrawing from his mind.

Severus gave her another hint:

_Each time you leave and return, you allow another chance for discovery upon your entry. Don't retreat; just stop pushing._

She hesitated, floating her searching tendril just outside of the compacted bubble of thought, and the fog thinned. She tried once to drift through the thin spot in the fog, but was shoved out again as the fog thickened at the first sign of her intrusion. She tried the same thing, again and again, in different places along the edge of the little bubble. He felt her getting frustrated, offered encouragement.

_You're almost there. Think._

He could feel her examining the bubble more closely, snaking her little tendril of of thought all around it, feeling it out. In front of him, in the study, Calista bit her lip as she thought about this puzzle. He could see her mind working, feel her curiosity, her determination to figure this out.

And then, he felt a tiny  _poke_  at one spot on the bubble. The fog thickened again where she touched, and he felt another  _poke_ in a different location. Fog moved from its even distribution to respond to these touchpoints, and she kept sticking tiny tendrils of herself against the bubble on one side, until the other side of the bubble was clear. She pushed herself through, and reached the information he had saved there for her.

Severus paid careful attention as Calista sorted through the knowledge he had hidden inside the mind-bubble. He had enclosed a little packet of information, explaining, simplistically, the nature of occlumency and legilimency; he revealed to her that she had been practising occlumency in its most basic form for quite a long time, was right now, at this very instant, performing legilimency. Finally, he showed her, in the form of a passage he'd memorised from the very same book they'd been reading together, in a chapter they hadn't gotten to yet, that both were magical arts.

He could feel her confusion turn to surprise, and then to a glimmer of hope, and it was here that he gathered all the little searching bits of her that were in his mind, and guided them, and her, gently out of his mind.

She started, eliciting a small gasp, when that tendril snapped back into her own mind; it was a jarring sensation, at first, to return all at once to your own mind. He waited until she seemed to have come completely back to herself, leaned forward in his chair again, and, still keeping his eyes locked on her, spoke to her quietly, spelling out what he had only implied in his mind:

"What you needed more than anything else was a place to hide, and so you created one, inside your mind. This is the way that your powers manifested themselves; just the way you needed them to."

She looked at him, dark eyes wide, and there was a hunger in them that reminded him powerfully of the way that he had felt when his mother first told him about Hogwarts, told him what he was. It had changed his life, when she'd spoken the words aloud, given him hope and a foundation to build his identity on; Now, he offered his daughter the same cornerstone, spoke softly but full of conviction, so she would know his words for the truth.

With a single sentence, he took the final step in allaying her the secret fear that he had seen flitting about the corners of her mind, the reason that she thought he would want to be rid of her, now.

"Calista, my child, you  _are_  a witch."


	7. "Why do you keep trying to be nice to me, anyway?"

 

Severus absently fingered the rim of a cup of tea he'd had pressed into his hands, rather against his will. He sat in a well-cushioned armchair, on the opposite side of a heavy wooden desk from a man several decades his senior, who was stirring two sugar cubes into his own tea with maddening calm.

Only after the older man had stirred his tea for precisely thirty-seven seconds, settled comfortably in his own chair, and steepled his hands on the surface of the desk, did he meet Severus' gaze expectantly.

"Now that we are both situated comfortably, what can I do for you, Severus?" Albus Dumbledore asked mildly.

"I need to discuss a matter of some delicacy with you," Severus said.

"Indeed? And what would that be?" Albus lifted his teacup, and took a delicate sip.

Severus waited until the Headmaster had put his teacup down again; this was a very serious matter, in his mind, and he didn't want to treat it like a damn tea party. He inched his own teacup away from himself slightly.

"I believe that it may be necessary to modify Calista's memory," he said, cautiously.

Albus regarded Severus with steady blue eyes. "I see," he said, after a moment, "And what has led you to this conclusion?"

Severus exhaled, pursed his lips. "What you'd heard, from that mass-murdering sociopath, is true. Bellatrix did cast Unforgivable Curses on her."

When Dumbledore only nodded, as if expecting the younger man to elaborate, Severus continued.

"That, unfortunately, is not the upper limit to the atrocities that Bellatrix was willing to commit against her. She's been hurt very badly, Albus, and I'm not convinced that she can recover from all of it."

Dumbledore's features remained more-or-less politely impassive, but his eyes revealed considerable sadness, which touched Severus perhaps more than it ought to have done.

"I am very sorry to hear that, Severus," the older man said quietly, "Truly, I had hoped that Sirius Black's report was incorrect. However, I must ask precisely how you have come to the conclusion that your daughter cannot heal from these painful memories, now that she has at last found a stable environment, and a caring guardian?"

His tone came across as mild, curious, even though the question carried a certain levity by its nature.

Severus considered his reply carefully; he didn't want to give away more of Calista's secrets than he had to. He trusted Dumbledore, but they weren't his secrets to divulge.

"I believe she  _can_  heal, from most of her negative memories, once she trusts me enough to let me help her process them. But there are a few that are so very difficult, that they prevent her from feeling safe enough to open up to me, or to anyone, for that matter."

"I take it, then, that she still won't communicate?"

"Not verbally, yet," Severus said, "But I am learning how to read her, and she'll respond to me by gesture, sometimes."

"Forgive me, Severus, but you seem to have a great deal of understanding in regard to the nature of her memories. Surely you haven't gleaned all of that merely from her body language?"

"Of course not," Severus said, irritated that the Headmaster was making him put what he had done into words, "I entered her mind using legilimency. I didn't feel as if I had much of a choice."

He thought the Headmaster would chastise him for penetrating the mind of a child so young, but Dumbledore only looked curious.

"What shape was her mind in?" he asked, "Did it appear irreparably damaged?"

Severus frowned. "Not damaged, no. I would describe it as… haunted."

"Ah," Dumbledore said, lifting his teacup again. He regarded Severus over its rim. "Aren't we all, Severus?"

"Not like this," Severus said, grimly. "Not at her age."

"I understand your concern, Severus, and your motive. What I remain unconvinced of is whether modifying her memory is the  _best_  course of action. I suspect you share my uncertainty, or you would not be here, asking for my opinion."

"Of course I'm uncertain," Severus said, a note of irritation creeping back into his voice. "As difficult as it may be to believe, I have never before been responsible for the welfare of a perennially abused seven-year-old. I'm uncertain as to what I'm supposed to give her for breakfast, let alone how I'm meant to undo years of horrific mistreatment."

"You can't," Dumbledore said baldly, "But even if such a thing were possible, would it truly be wise? Wouldn't you agree with me, Severus, that sometimes it is the things that one triumphs over that make that someone who they are?"

Severus' jaw tightened.

"Of all people, Severus," the Headmaster continued, "I would expect you to understand what I am getting at. Even if one can't remember why they feel sad, or angry, they will still feel that way. In fact, not remembering can be crueler; how can one ever expect to  _move on_  from a pain they can't understand?

"You're goading me," Severus said sharply, "You are comparing what you know of myself to Calista. It's not the same thing."

"No, perhaps not," the older man said, folding his hands on his desk, "But I wouldn't be surprised if it were a remarkably similar thing."

The two men looked at each other in silence for a long moment, until Dumbledore smiled and rose from his chair.

"Here are my feelings on the matter, Severus," he said, "Modifying Calista's memory so extensively would be an incredibly complicated and sensitive process, one which would likely take both of us to do it properly. However, I can't even consider it unless Calista demonstrates an understanding of what we would be undertaking, and requests it herself."

"Oh," Dumbledore added, after a brief pause, "I believe children like cereal. You could try giving her some of that, at breakfast."

With that, Albus Dumbledore excused himself from the office, and Severus was left staring furiously at an empty desk. He turned on his heel and exited the office, his expression dark. How could he possibly explain the concept of memory modification to a young child in a way that she could understand? And that was the least of his obstacles. How could he get Calista to request memory modification from Dumbledore when she wouldn't speak a word?

**(¯ˆ·.¸¸.·ˆ¯)**

The following Saturday morning, Severus and Calista sat across the small kitchen table from each other, customary mug of coffee before each of them. Severus had brewed this batch, and he'd made it intentionally weak, in the hope of eventually weaning his daughter off it it entirely, at least until she was a bit older.

She took a sip, and made a face. Well,she could tell, then. Severus watched her in silence for a minute. He thought there had been something just slightly different in her expression since the day in his study when he'd encouraged her to try legilimency, and had shown her some of his own memories.

Yes, it  _was_ different. He was sure of it. She looked, while not exactly relaxed, somehow less closed-off. It gave him an idea.

"You know, Calista," he said, conversationally, "I believe we missed your birthday. You'd be seven now, yes?"

She looked at him uncertainly, shrugged her shoulders.

"Well," he continued, "I'd like to get you a present, even though it's late. I'm thinking perhaps a book, but I'm not sure what sort of book you'd like. Perhaps you can give me some idea?"

If he was being honest with himself, he didn't expect that this would be the thing that finally made her speak up, but he'd hoped so despite himself. If this didn't work, she would not be happy with his next course of action. Still, he wanted to try kindness first.

She set her mug down, and looked at him with raised eyebrows, and an unmistakably contemptuous disbelief. It was as plain as if she'd said,  _Do you really think I'm going to fall for that?_

"I know that you could speak to me if you chose to," he said quietly, "And I really wish that you would."

She lifted her mug and took another sip of the watery coffee, giving no indication that she had heard him.

"Let's look at it logically, then," he tried, "You were afraid you were a Squib for years, and I showed you in half an hour that you're not. If you'd just told me that's what you were afraid of, I could have shown you months ago. You could have found out about your mother being in Azkaban the day we met, if you'd told me you were afraid of her coming back. The way I see it, it's in your own best interests to talk to me."

She glared at him, an expression he hated on her face. Resigned to the last tactic he'd wanted to use, he sighed.

"All right, then," Severus said, matter-of-factly, "Just try and remember, at the end of this conversation, that I did try to be nice, at first."

Calista set her face stonily and glanced towards the doorway, and Severus glared at her much the same way he would have glared at a student trying to leave his class early for anything short of third-degree burns.

"I wouldn't." he advised, and she remained where she was.

He looked her over, the hard set to her face, the glowering look in her eyes.

"If you won't speak to me willingly, then I'm prepared to make a bargain with you," he said, coolly.

She shook her head,  _no_.

"You don't even know what it is yet," he said, unable to keep his irritation completely out of his voice, now.

She scowled. Severus went on, anyway.

"I can't force you to talk to me," he said, "But I can find out what I need to know, one way or another. I don't want to invade your mind, Calista, but I will if I have to."

He leaned forward. "That's my bargain. As long as you speak to me, I give you my word that I will not use legilimency to read your thoughts."

He could see the gears turning in her head. This had been his last resort; he hadn't wanted to threaten her, but what he'd said was the truth.

Silence stretched on before them, and it occurred to Severus that he may have backed himself into a corner. What if she decided she'd rather have him enter her mind now and again, instead of electing to speak to him? There was really nowhere he could take this deal from here, if she refused to make it. But he had a hunch that, with her, this would work. He hoped he was correct.

"Why?" It had come out of her mouth so suddenly that Severus scarcely registered her mouth moving.

"Why what?" Severus prompted, when it didn't look as though she were going to say any more.

"Why do you want me to talk so much?" Her voice sounded a bit hoarse, but not nearly as disused as one might expect. It had a higher pitch than he had expected it to.

"Oh, a number of reasons," Severus said, doing his best to modulate his own voice, make himself sound casual and matter-of-fact.

In truth, he was surprised and more than a little pleased; it had actually worked. She was speaking, after five months of silence with him, and Merlin knew how long before him.

"Not least of which is the same thing I've been trying to tell you all along," he continued, "I want you to feel safe trusting me. Besides, I am sick and tired of feeling like I'm talking to myself all the time. Conversations generally work better if there are two or more parties involved."

"Every time I talk, it just gets me in trouble," she said, and her eyes were sad, now. "And no one much cares what I say, anyway."

Severus kept his gaze level with hers. "I think I have made it clear that I am very much interested in what you have to say."

Calista shrugged and pushed a hank of her messy dark hair back, hooking it behind her ear. She didn't say anything else, and neither did he. Finally, Calista looked up, a question in her eyes.

"Why do you keep trying to be nice to me, anyway?" Her tone was slightly suspicious, and he lifted his eyebrows in response.

"Because you are my daughter," he said, struggling with the right way to handle this situation. He knew there was probably some set of things he should say to a girl in her situation, but he had no idea what, and so he improvised. "And because… because despite all of your best efforts to ensure otherwise, I actually like you."

She looked at him with evident disbelief. "No one likes me," she said, matter-of-factly. He could hear a quaver of nerves in her voice, one that she tried to regulate, but couldn't quite.

"I do," he said simply. He tried to let his sincerity show in his face.

"Why?" she asked him, for the second time.

"Well," he said, allowing himself a small smile, "I suppose you remind me of myself, in some ways." He pushed his coffee mug away. It tasted like water, anyway. "Not many people like me, either," he confessed to her.

She furrowed her brow, wrinkled up the bridge of her nose, like she had when they'd practised legilimency. "Why?" she asked, a third time.

"I'm not entirely sure," he said, "But I suspect many of them are jealous."

He'd meant it as a joke, sort of. But instead of the smile he was hoping for, she nodded, seriously, as if what he'd said made a great deal of sense.

There was another silence, but this one didn't feel, to Severus, nearly as uncomfortable as their silences usually did.

"Cats," Calista said, suddenly, inexplicably.

"What?" Severus looked at her blankly.

"The book. For… for my birthday. I want one about cats."

"Of course," Severus said, feeling so relieved that she was actually speaking to him that he would have bought her a real cat if she'd asked for it, would probably have sincerely tried to buy her a unicorn if the words came out of her mouth. "I'll buy you one tomorrow."

**(¯ˆ·.¸¸.·ˆ¯)**

As it turned out, getting Calista to speak had no impact whatsoever on the number of disagreements they had, nor the number of stony silences or icy glares her had to endure. She was the same as always, in that regard: hot and cold, sometimes able to spend companionable hours with him his workshop, or reading a book together, and other times unwilling to share the same air.

Those companionable hours, though; they were different, because now they could have a conversation. A stilted, stuttery, often mostly one-sided conversation, but it was one nevertheless.

When she brought him ingredients for his potions, she would often ask what they were used for. He was all too keen to tell her, because this was his area of expertise. He may not know how to approach her about her past, or how to get her to tell him what she was thinking, but he knew how to explain potions.

And he found, for her part, that she was an apt student, or as apt as she could be at her age. Sometimes she would look at him blankly as he explained something, as if it were going entirely over her head, but other times, she'd listen, rapt, and even, occasionally, ask follow-up questions. He tried to be patient whenever she asked him anything, because he wanted to encourage her to keep talking.

It was during these times that he felt, just a bit, as if they were connecting. Slowly, almost agonizingly so, she thawed, during these hours. At first, she'd only asked him, very rarely, what something was used for; but as months went by, she would ask him about nearly all of them, and had even asked, several times, if she could add a particular ingredient herself, or stir the cauldron for him.

And so, even when it seemed, outwardly, that she was still the same distant, untrusting child when she was angry or distressed, he reminded himself of all these times, in the workshop, and he knew that they were making progress. It was slow, painstaking, but it was undeniably happening.

During the summer, he'd take her out, around the grounds. At first, she'd stayed several paces behind him, looking all around, but not saying anything unless he practically forced the words out of her. But then, her curiosity got the better of her, again. She'd ask him what certain plants were, what sorts of creatures lived in the lake, which rooms certain windows on the exterior of the castle corresponded to.

And then, in late August, only a week before term would start up again, they had an argument, and, perversely, it had given him more hope for the future of their relationship than nearly anything else that had happened between them.

"I want to go there," she said, pointing to the forest, as they walked several metres parallel from its edge.

"No," Severus said, "Students aren't allowed there; you aren't, either."

"Teachers can go?" she asked. He'd known exactly where this was going, but he'd told her once that he didn't intend to make a habit of lying to her. He sighed.

"Yes, teachers can go in there."

"Then you can take me," she said, as though the matter were already settled in her mind.

"You're correct," he said, "I  _can_  take you there if I want to, but it's far too dangerous, and I won't. Not until you're older."

"I am older," she said, stubbornly. "I'm older right now than I was when I asked you."

Severus smirked. She had him, there. " _Much_  older," he said, "As in years."

"How many years?"

"I don't know yet. Perhaps twenty." He was kidding, but she didn't pick up on it.

" _Twenty_  years?" she said, incredulously, "That's…" she cast about. There was a phrase she had heard before, one that stupid Jessica had used at the orphanage, one that would be perfect here, if only she could recall it.

"That's not fair," she said at last, pleased.

Severus nearly laughed. She sounded proud of herself, as if she expected that this phrase would miraculously change his mind.

"Perhaps it's not," he said, "But it wouldn't be very fair either, if I let you go in there, knowing you were too young, and something attacked you."

She was quiet for a minute. Then she stopped walking, looked up at him. "Let's make a bargain," she said slyly, "We can go in the forest, and if anything scary happens, then we can go back out, and I won't ask you again to go in. I… I give you my word," she finished.

Now he did laugh. There was no doubt that she was like him.

"It's not funny," she said, scowling. "I want to go in the forest!"

"Well, I  _don't_  want you to go into the forest."

"Why do you get to decide?" she asked, hotly.

"Because I'm the adult. And, incidentally, the one to whom it would fall to fight off any creature that attacked you."

"But that's  _not fair_ ," she said again. She said it as though she truly believed it were a magic phrase, that would force him to change his mind.

"I hate to be the one to break this to you, but not everything in life is fair, Calista. Especially not when you are a child wishing to do something incredibly dangerous. You're not going into that forest today, or tomorrow, or any day in the foreseeable future. That's why it's called  _Forbidden_."

She screwed up her face, and gave him another of her stormy glares, but he didn't care.

Perhaps she would only remember today as the day that he had refused to allow her to enter the forest at the edge of the grounds. But he would remember it another way. It was the day that she had disagreed with him out loud, and not looked as though she expected him to hurt her in retaliation. It was the day that she'd argued with him just like one of his students would have. In short, it was the day that she had first sounded precisely like a normal, healthy child.


	8. "I won't let her hurt you again."

Since he and Calista got on with each other the best when they were in his workroom downstairs, Severus thought it would be a good idea to begin actually teaching her the art of potions-brewing, at the weekends.

She'd responded to the idea with enthusiasm, and it had seemed, at first, like an act of sheer brilliance on his part. She was bright, and eager to learn. When he demonstrated the instructions, step by step, she absorbed it, imitated him down to her posture as she stirred the cauldron; she still couldn't reach the worktop, so he'd borrowed a kitchen chair for her to stand on. She looked rather like a miniature of him, looking down very solemnly into the cauldron as she stirred it, dark hair falling forward.

The trouble began when she felt that she'd already grasped a particular concept, or step in a recipe. He always left the potions book they were using open on the worktop, to the recipe they were following. As soon as he turned his back, she took to reading ahead in the recipe.

She liked to try to figure out the next step on her own, which was an admirable ambition, but was unfortunately very often beyond her scope. There were an abundance of words in the potions books he was using that didn't seem to be in Calista's vocabulary. When instructed to mince, granulate, or otherwise modify the ingredients, she often seemed at a loss as to what exactly she was supposed to do with them - but it didn't stop her from trying to go ahead with the potion anyway. There were more than a few times where he had stopped her just in time from ignoring the words she didn't understand and simply dumping the ingredients in as they were.

"There's a reason for every single word in a potion recipe," he had to explain more than once. "No matter how small the detail, it must be followed properly or the entire thing stands to be ruined."

Just as Severus couldn't keep a small note of annoyance out of his voice after the first time he had given an instruction, Calista could not control  _her_  annoyance at being corrected. She still didn't say much, but her eyes would flash and she would follow his instructions with exaggeratedly slow and careful movements.

She also still had a maddening habit of simply leaving a room as soon as he said something she didn't like.

During one of these instances, when Severus corrected a mistake she had made in measuring, she snapped at him.

"I'm not  _daft_ ," she said, her face twisting into a childlike scowl.

Severus raised his eyebrows and met her gaze with his own.

"If I thought you were daft, I wouldn't bother spending so much time correcting you," he responded, his tone admittedly exasperated. "However, I do think you'd catch on a lot faster if you would stop making such an effort to ignore everything I say."

Calista's scowl only deepened, and she dumped the handful of beetles' eyes she was holding, which was twice the amount the brew called for and the initial source of this particular argument, into the cauldron, proving his point by ignoring him once more.

Severus, knowing full well what would happen if too many beetles' eyes were used, drew his wand from the his pocket, and sent a freezing spell to engulf the cauldron and the flame beneath it.

Perhaps sensing his anger, and wisely electing not to be on the receiving end of it, Calista hurriedly got down from the seat of the kitchen chair, and scampered towards the stairs.

"Wait. A. Minute," he said, in a tone that brooked no argument. He turned to face his daughter, who stopped walking but didn't turn towards him. He quickly removed the cauldron from the flame before turning to face Calista's back.

"Come here, Calista."

He was unable to keep a mild amount of displeasure out of his words, and Calista whirled around, and marched defiantly towards him.

Severus thought with an inward snarl that this was the only child he had yet met that could be obedient and defiant at the same time. He was quite certain that he had never been this difficult as a child, although some of his own teachers would have begged to differ.

"As I was saying," he said, looking down at her sternly, "There is a reason why call for ingredients in particular proportions. You are not daft, which is why I'm astounded that you chose to do such a daft thing."

He could see Calista's eyes clouding with anger, but he ignored it, and pressed on.

"Beetles' eyes are typically fairly inert," he lectured, "but when coupled with fire salamander scales, which you had already added to the draught, they become quite explosive. You could have blown that cauldron up in your face."

Calista scowled at him again, and clenched her jaw tightly; she still resorted to silence when she was most frustrated, and her silence frustrated Severus in turn. He waited a few more moments as the silence stretched before them, before coming to a decision.

"Fine. If you won't listen to me when I try to instruct you, then I won't waste my time until you have a better idea what you are working with. There will be no more potions lessons until you have thoroughly researched the two hundred most commonly used ingredients. I want you to write a brief description of each one, including alternate names, appearance, identifying traits, look-alikes, main uses, and, most importantly, interactions with other commonly used ingredients."

Gods, had he just given her homework? He had, and despite himself, it struck him as just a bit amusing.

Calista, however, did not share his amusement. Her childish glare was slowly replaced with a blank, expressionless mask. He wasn't even certain that she had done it on purpose, since she was still young enough for her power to act without her conscious consent. Still, it exhausted and exasperated Severus, after having spent months trying to forge a connection with his daughter, getting her to express her feelings.

"I'd very much like to know  _what_  it is you have against me, child. I have done everything in my power to make you as happy as I can. All I ask in return is that you respect me as your… elder."

He had been about to say 'father', but, in that moment, he felt awkward, and changed it at the last second.

Calista closed her eyes and opened her mouth. "I didn't ask you for anything,"

Severus blinked, looking at the tiny figure that stood defiantly facing him, even though she scarcely came to his waist. Of all the responses he expected from the child, this wasn't one of them.

"What?" was the first response he had, and out it came.

"I didn't ask you for anything," Calista repeated, opening her eyes, but keeping them trained on the floor, "Why should I have to do what you say?"

"Because I'm responsible for you, and that's generally the way it works."

"You don't have to be," she said, a note of challenge creeping into her voice now, "You can bring me back to the stupid orphanage any time you want to."

"Oh, I see. Is that what you want, simply because I asked you  _not_  to blow our house up?"

He knew he shouldn't have risen to her bait, but the child knew just how to aggravate him; it was as if she knew precisely what made him tick, and perhaps she did have some idea, because she set her face stonily again.

"Yes," she said, "That is what I want. I'm tired of living with you and all your stupid rules."

That wounded him; he tried not to show it, as he hastily turned away from her, and began clearing the remains of their unfinished potion from the worktop.

Once he had finished clearing the surface in silence, he carefully schooled his expression before turning around. She was still in the same place, staring at him. He expected to see the same hard, set look on her face, but was surprised to see that it had been replaced with another expression.

She looked curious, questioning, and sad all at once. She also looked like she was expecting some sort of reply. When he didn't give one, she spoke again.

"Well," she said, and her voice wobbled with more than her usual nervous tremor. "Are you going to bring me back?"

"No, I'm not," he said quietly. "Sorry to disappoint you, but I think it's best that you stay here, with me and my 'stupid rules'."

"Fine," she said, and there was remarkably little fight left in her voice; it sounded small, and forlorn, and Severus was bewildered. How had all of this happened, just because he hadn't wanted the contents of the cauldron to explode and possibly injure her? Before he had time to try and sort any of it out, she had turned and flounced up the stairs, leaving him behind and still very confused.

**(¯ˆ·.¸¸.·ˆ¯)**

Despite her frequent blow-ups at him, Calista generally seemed to like spending time with Severus; she almost never left the breakfast table before him, anymore, and she still liked him to read to her, even though there were some books that he had given her permission to look at on her own.

She even took, sometime after their argument in Severus' workroom, to slipping out of the flat and into his office during the day. Sometimes, he would find her there mid-day, when he went in between classes, and often she would linger when he was working, drafting lesson plans or correcting students' work. She wasn't particularly chatty during most of these times, but nor did she seem inclined to leave.

Sometimes, she brought books in with her; ones of his that he had deemed, if not quite appropriate for her age, then at least ones which weren't likely to be harmful, and both of the books that he had bought her about cats. Other times, she took blank sheets of parchment from the desk in his study with her, and scrawled all over the pages. As far as he could tell, she mostly drew scribbly, unidentifiable pictures, but a few times he'd seen her writing equally scribbly words. She'd show him the pictures, occasionally, but she was always very secretive about the pages with words on them.

Of course, some of the times that she was in his office, it was open for students with questions or needing extra help. Whenever footsteps approached, her ears would perk, and she would become very still. If a knock came at the door, or the knob turned, she would bolt, only venturing back when he was again alone, or when the office was empty.

Sometimes, she'd ask him what he was doing, or if they could go outside soon, but most of the time she was quiet, except for the turning of a page or the scratching of a quill.

He tried to take her outside once a week, or as close to that as he had time for. They'd argued about the forest three more times, and she once asked to go swimming in the lake, but aside from that, it was more or less enjoyable. Whenever they drew close to someone else though, be it a teacher or a student, Calista would either retreat behind the nearest object large enough to hide her, or look at the ground and pretend she couldn't see them.

One such time, Calista had asked to see inside the greenhouses, so they'd gone inside, on a late afternoon, when no classes were scheduled in them. They'd rounded a corner, and run into a fifth-year student wearing Ravenclaw robes. Calista hadn't noticed at first, being caught up in gazing at a bed of Fanged Geraniums.

"Hello, Professor Snape," the student said, smiling cautiously. She was wearing dragonhide gloves, and tending the very same plants Calista was looking at, further down the bed. She had brown hair in a single plait, and a rather friendly-looking face. This didn't stop Calista from backing up several paces and eyeing the teenager warily.

"Miss Machnyth," he replied, "Studying for your O.W.L.s?"

She nodded, and then added,"I've been studying for Potions too, don't worry."

"I'm sure you have," he said, not unkindly. She was one of his better students; he was positive she'd be in his advanced class next year, if she chose to take it. Moreover, she was a Prefect, and had a reputation for being particularly kind to first-year students, so he took a gamble and decided to introduce her to Calista. So far, he had not managed to get her to speak to anyone besides him, though he'd tried more than once.

"This is my daughter, Calista," he said, "You may have seen her around the castle with me, although she usually prefers to hide."

"I didn't know you had children," the girl said, and then she blushed. "Not that it's any of my business."

She took off her right glove, and held her hand out to the little girl, for her to shake. Calista promptly stepped back another pace, and turned her head to study one of the toothy plants very intently.

"Hello, Calista," the teenager said, "It's nice to meet you. My name's Fainne."

Calista looked at her only long enough to scowl; the older girl laughed uncertainly. "She's very shy, isn't she?" she asked, glancing back up at Snape.

"Something like that," Severus responded drily. He turned his head to look at his daughter.

"Miss Machnyth won't bite you, Calista," he said, "But that plant might, if you get much closer to it."

Calista responded by turning around and exiting the greenhouse. Severus sighed, and followed her out.

"You'll have to learn to talk to other people eventually," he said, but she was already running ahead of him to look at the giant pumpkins near the Gamekeeper's hut.

He'd tried taking her to have lunch with Dumbledore, too, that same week. Severus had already told the Headmaster that he'd gotten the child to speak, but of course, Calista made him look the fool by refusing to utter a single word in the presence of anyone else.

Finally, when Dumbledore had left, Severus was fed up enough to ask her why.

"No one here is going to hurt you," Severus said, impatiently. "What's the harm in talking to someone once in awhile?"

"I don't want to," she said sulkily.

"We had a deal," Severus reminded her.

Calista folded her arms defiantly. "The deal was I had to talk to  _you_ ," she said, "You never said anything about anyone else."

_Damn it_ , Severus snarled inwardly. Because when he thought back, that was precisely what he'd said to her. Despite himself, he smirked. As infuriating as it was, it was a little bit funny, like something he might have pulled himself as a child.

"You're too clever for your own good by half," he told her, unable to keep some affection from his words, even though he  _was_  still irritated with her.

She smiled then, evidently pleased. He thought there might have been something vaguely triumphant about it, but she'd turned and left the room before he had time to tell for sure.

"This discussion isn't over," he called after her.

**(¯ˆ·.¸¸.·ˆ¯)**

The nightmares still happened, sometimes more frequently than others. Often, Severus had found himself woken from a sound sleep with only the vague notion that  _something_  was wrong. When he'd gone to check on Calista, she'd been in the grip of another dream, whimpering and restless.

She never wanted him to get close, but he always did it anyway, stayed with her, sometimes holding her and sometimes just sitting beside her, depending on how agitated she was. When it was really necessary, he gave her a moderate sleeping potion, but only after trying to coax her back to sleep without it. Sometimes she needed the potion; other times, he was able to calm her enough to go back to sleep on her own.

On these nights, he found himself thinking back to his conversation with Albus Dumbledore. He knew there was some merit to the old man's words, that Calista should try healing from her traumas before they resorted to altering her memory, but it was hard to remember that when she trembled and cried out, eyes round with terror.

Both of them were often short on sleep as a result of her nightmares, which in turn led to shorter tempers and more arguments. Some of them were frivolous, but other times she would again insist that he take her back to the orphanage. He wondered if she said it for any reason other than to hurt him; at any rate, that was all it seemed to accomplish.

Perhaps two weeks after his failed attempts to get her to speak to someone that wasn't him, he was in his office, approving N.E.W.T projects for his seventh years. Severus had a regular curriculum of the things that he expected would be on the exam, but he also allowed his students to choose independent project they wanted to work on, for their own enrichment. Before he would allow them to begin, however, he looked over each one to ensure that the project could reasonably be done at Hogwarts, and that it wasn't entirely out of the scope of whichever student had submitted it. He also gave them back a list of the ingredients that they would need to send away for, since not all of them were available in the school's stores.

More often than not, most of the students wanted to make the most dangerous poison they could dig up a recipe for in the Restricted section of the library, but every now and again, their ideas would surprise him. He was going to have to tell one of his Slytherins, for example, that he could not make Veritaserum for an independent project. Severus would have liked to allow it, but the Board of Governors would have frowned on that. (Why they didn't seem to frown on the students making highly dangerous poisons, Severus couldn't guess).

He was reviewing these independent project requests when Calista slipped into his office, book in hand. There was a second chair, but she ignored it and sat down on the floor, a short distance away from his desk. After a few minutes, Severus heard the scratching of a quill. When he looked over, she was scribbling in her little book, the one she'd had with her the day he met her.

"That book must be almost filled by now," he commented, "Perhaps we should buy you another one."

"It's not full," Calista said, "There's always one page left."

"Just one page?" Severus paused, his own quill poised above a seventh-year Ravenclaw's request to brew a Skin-Sloughing Solution, "You'll fill that today."

"Maybe," Calista said easily, "But there will be another page the next time I feel like writing in it… at least, I think there will…"

"Ah," Severus said, realising that she must mean there were random blank pages in the book still that she hadn't found and filled all of, "Well, if you find yourself out of blank pages, let me know." He paused, and then: "What are you writing, anyway?"

She looked at him in a way that could only be described as imperious; it was a look he'd seen on Bellatrix's face often enough, but he would never tell Calista that.

"Secrets," she said, loftily.

"I see."

"What are  _you_  writing?" she countered.

"Secrets," he replied, mimicking her tone precisely.

She laughed, and he found himself smiling too. He loved the way her face lit up when she laughed or smiled; it made him forget, for a fraction of an instant, how difficult she normally was. More importantly, it gave him hope that she wasn't beyond saving. Perhaps she  _could_  triumph, as Dumbledore had suggested, without having her memories altered.

**(¯ˆ·.¸¸.·ˆ¯)**

Severus must have tempted fate by thinking that she was doing better, that he may not need to modify her memory at all, because scarcely a week after he had begun to think in this way, he was woken in the middle if the night by one of her nightmares again.

Every time he woke up, he thought for certain that he had heard her screaming for help; but once he had come to his senses, leapt out of bed and rushed into her room, he realised that it was not so. She never screamed, only whimpered and mumbled in her sleep very occasionally.

On this night, when he entered her bedroom, with his wand lit and his robes thrown hastily over his nightshirt, it took him several seconds to realise that she  _was_  screaming. It wasn't just in his head this time.

"Calista, wake up," he urged, putting his hands at her shoulders and gently shaking her. "It's only a dream, wake up."

It was only a dream wasn't it? She was sleeping, or at least her eyes were closed, but she was crying out as though she was in great pain; despite himself, his head whipped around, checking the corners of the room for forms that didn't belong there. but there was only the candelabra in one corner, and her wardrobe against the wall. He lit the candelabra with his wand, then slipped his wand into the pocket of his robes.

"Calista!" he said louder, and her eyes snapped open, feral with terror. Immediately, she stretched her arms out, began clawing at him. She landed a scratch on the side of his face, and he grabbed her wrists before she could inflict any more damage. She was still screaming.

"Calista, it's only me," Severus said firmly, loudly, trying to raise his voice high enough for her to hear over her own racket. "You're safe. Nothing's here, nothing's hurting you."

She took in several great, gasping breaths, and then her screams changed to choked sobs. He saw her eyes dart around the room, checking all the same corners that he had already done.

"You're safe," he repeated, experimentally loosening his grip on her wrists. As soon as they were free, she sat up, reaching both arms behind her back, feeling frantically for something.

"The knife," she said, voice hoarse, eyes still round and half-wild, "Get it out!"

"Calista, there is no knife," he said, trying to sound reassuring, and reaching for her hands again. She was clawing futilely at her back now, trying to pull out an imaginary blade. He took her hands, held them together in front of her. "It was a dream."

"It's real," she managed, but whatever else she was trying to say was lost in another series of choked cries.

"Calm down," he urged, "Breathe. You're safe. There's no knife, and there's no one here but you and I."

He let go of her hands again, reached for her with the intention of holding her until she was calm, the way he had done through more than a dozen nightmares, now.

She recoiled from him, as soon as he drew close, putting her arms up to push him away.

"Calista, it's me."

"G-go away," she choked, and nothing he said would coax the terror out of her eyes. She started trembling, violently, worse than he had ever seen her.

"You're safe," he told her, again and again, but this time, she wouldn't believe him, wouldn't stop trembling, wouldn't let him get close enough to comfort her. She had drawn her arms around herself, as if she were cold, but whenever he tried to inch closer to her, they unfolded from around herself, threatening to shove him or claw at him again.

"I s-said g-go away," she said, warily, in between frantic, shallow breaths. There was still a wildness in her eyes, something that told him that she wasn't, quite yet, separated from her dream.

"I don't want to go away," Severus said quietly, "Not when you're frightened and sad. I'd rather keep you company until you feel better."

He tried to keep his voice steady, reassuring, but in truth he was frightened himself; he thought perhaps he should try to get her to the hospital wing, somehow. Her breathing was still erratic, gasping and hoarse, and she was shaking like a leaf.

"Calista," he tried again, and even he could hear the concern that leaked around the edges of his words, despite his calm affectations. "Breathe. You're going to make yourself sick."

"C-can't," she coughed, choking on the word. And then, "H-help me! M-make her - make her stop!"

"There's no one else here," he said, trying to keep his own emotions out of his face. He felt his gut twist, his heart flutter into his throat. Was this what she had sounded like, when Bellatrix had been torturing her? Scarcely breathing, and crying for help that never came? Or, he should say, help that came far, far too late.

Shit. He was  _not_  feeling heat behind his own eyes. His own hands were  _not_  shaking with rage, with some dark feeling heavy like sadness but as intense as dragonfire. And even if they were, he didn't have time to process it, to feel anything of his own, not until he had managed to pull her back from the brink of utter panic.

"She's in Azkaban," he reminded her, "You're safe."

Perhaps he had managed to inject more finality into the phrase this time, because, at long last, some of the wildness in her eyes began to fade, a fog of terror gradually melting into a clear, wary sadness.

"She-she's gone?" Calista whispered, drawing in a deep, shuddering breath. Another great shiver racked her small form.

"She's gone," Severus confirmed, easing closer to her again. "Locked up, far away."

"What if she gets out?" the fear pricked at her eyes again, he saw her shoulders tense, saw her choke on another breath.

"I don't think that will happen," he said, reaching for her. He pulled her close at last, and she was like a frightened little bird in his arms; he could feel her heart pounding between them, and she was still sharp angles and jutting little bones all over.

"What if it does?" Her voice was muffled by his shoulder, but he could still make out the words.

"Then I will protect you," he said, "I won't let her hurt you again." He said it very quietly, right into her ear.

He thought, just for an instant, that she stopped trembling. But then, she shivered again, lifted her head from his shoulder, and looked at him, eye to eye. He expected to see fear and sadness there, and he did, but he also saw something he wasn't ready to name, just yet. Something that made him wonder if, maybe, she was beginning to trust him.

"I was lying before," she said, regarding him solemnly. "When I said I wanted to go back." Severus could still hear the wobble of tears in her voice, and he could hear as well her fierce determination to hold them back.

"I'm glad to hear that," he murmured, "Since I was never going to send you back, anyway."

"Never?" she sounded uncertain, "Even if I'm really, really mean and I never do what you say?"

"Not even then," he said, firmly. "Although I sincerely hope, for both of our sakes, that that isn't your plan."

She shook her head, and then: "Will anyone else come take me? To a different house, again?"

She shivered again, although he could feel it starting to subside, now. Her heart wasn't pounding so fiercely anymore, either.

A bit of her hair fell across her forehead; he pushed it back, studying at her face carefully. "Do you want them to?"

She shook her head, again. "I don't like anyone else. Except… except you."

Severus felt his heart in his throat again, for an entirely different reason this time. He was quiet for several seconds. Then he managed, "Well. No one else is going to come and take you."

She settled her head on his shoulder again, and Severus realised with a start that it was the first time, really, that she had willingly sought physical contact with him. He held her, perhaps another quarter of an hour, as her trembling gradually stopped.

He thought she had fallen asleep when she murmured, by his ear, "I wish you came to get me sooner."

He exhaled, was silent for the space of several breaths. "I… I wish that too, Calista," he managed. Even to himself, his voice sounded roughened and heavy, but she didn't notice, or she was asleep; the only acknowledgement he got was the flutter of warm breath by his neck, the weight of her small, dark head on his shoulder.

Long after he knew she was asleep, he still turned that thought over in his mind. What if he had found her sooner? What if he could have prevented her pain, the darkness that had blighted her childhood before it had even begun? Even if it put everything else at risk, would he have done it?

As the child,  _his_  child, slept more or less peacefully in his arms, he forced himself to consider the reasons why he hadn't looked for her sooner, hadn't dared to ask Dumbledore for her whereabouts until after Bellatrix was locked away in Azkaban.

Bellatrix had been with more than one person he personally knew; there could have been any number of people who fathered the child, and she wouldn't say, wouldn't let anyone see her. Still, that wasn't the thing that had prevented him from acting.

True, he had known that Bellatrix was cruel and twisted, but he had not fully realised to what extent. He had not envisioned such a horrific childhood for the unknown infant, and perhaps it would have prompted him to act – but either way, he knew he would have placed both himself and the child at risk.

No one crossed Bellatrix Lestrange, Lord Voldemort's personal pet, and maintained the Dark Lord's trust. It had been  _essential_  that Severus remain in a trusted position at Voldemort's right hand in order to protect Lily.

_It didn't work out that way, though, did it?_ A nasty voice hissed in his mind, and fought an overwhelming urge to get up, leave his daughter's bedroom, and break something, anything. The world was a dark place, certainly, but Severus always managed, somehow, to end up cloaked in its deepest shadows.

And what did he have, now? In his heart, where he should have held the mechanisms that would allow him to love again, all he could see was the excruciating knowledge that he had failed both of the people who meant more than anything to him.

Severus writhed inwardly with self-loathing and disgust. He had not deserved to keep Lily, and he had lost her to that arrogant prick, Potter, and ultimately lost her forever, even the memory of her stained with her blood, and his guilt.

Now he had a daughter, a flighty, half-broken, stubborn, bright little girl with his eyes and his ghosts, and even though he was doing his best, he couldn't stop feeling like he was always coming up short. What if what he was doing now, taking care of her, holding her when the horrors of her past overwhelmed her, giving her a safe place to grow… what if all of it was too little, too late?

Just as he had these thoughts, Calista shifted in her sleep, settled more heavily against him, and sighed.


	9. "Merry Christmas, Severus."

In his free time, Severus began researching dreams, specifically nightmares in young children. He thought there must be some things that he could do to help reduce the frequency and severity of her nightmares, besides continuously dose her with sleeping potions. In the days after a particularly bad nightmare, she would often be afraid to go to sleep, would try to stay awake through the night, drink coffee during the day.

He'd offered, more than once, to stay with her at night, to drag a chair into her room and sleep there, or to let her stay in his room, but, unless she was in the immediate aftermath of a nightmare, she always took this as an insult, insisting that she wasn't a baby, could sleep by herself.

He found an awful lot of sources, in his research, that suggested talking to her about her nightmares, rehashing the scenes in them that had frightened her so much. It was supposed to help her separate the dream from reality, but Severus didn't understand how this would help in her specific case. Wouldn't he be asking her to relive her worst memories, over and over? Surely, that would do more harm than good, he thought, because Calista wasn't dreaming about an imaginary, fanged monster living under her bed. She was dreaming about a real monster, one who had put scars all over her, inside and out.

There were a few other things, too. It was bad for her to have a lot of sweets, especially late at night, but she didn't eat many of them anyway. He did find that caffeine was bad for her, that it could interfere with her getting the right sort of sleep, and that the resulting sleep deprivation could cause a spate of overactive dreaming when she did manage to fall into a deep sleep; that was a good bit of information, one worth experimenting with.

There were other, simple things that he had never thought of, as well. A lot of children slept better if they had a small light on in their room, and a few books suggested soft toys or other comforts to help allay a child's fears. What he came across, again and again, was that it was important to comfort a child after a nightmare, to reassure them that it was only a dream, and that they were, in fact, safe. Well, he had been doing that right, at least. And it  _did_  seem to help - she always went back to sleep, eventually, when he stayed with her. Most of the time, she laid back down and went to sleep while he sat on the edge of her bed, a silent sentinel. But a handful of times, she fell asleep in his arms, the two of them cuddled up against whatever terrors the night held.

Those were the times that Severus thought they felt most like a family; a tiny, half-wild, strange sort of family, but one that he wouldn't trade away for much of anything. He hoped that she felt the same way, that she could find the idea comforting, could learn to think of a parent as someone that was there to teach and protect her, rather than someone who wanted only to dominate and control her.

She had said she liked him; that was a start, wasn't it? And she wanted to stay with him, didn't want to go back to anywhere else she'd been or anywhere new, either. And, he knew he couldn't discount the fact that he had gotten her to speak, inside of roughly half a year. He knew from her memories that she had stopped speaking to Bellatrix at least a year before she was taken by the Order of the Phoenix, and she had never spoken to anyone since then until, of all things, she'd asked him "Why?".

That told him more than nearly anything else what sort of person she was, when the traumas and the nightmares and the fragility of childhood melted away; she was bright, inquisitive, stubborn, cautious, curious, even, by turns, thorny. She was, seven years old or not, precisely the sort of person he liked to spend time with. If they had been children at the same time, he thought they would have been friends. Regardless of what she was like, Severus would have begun carign for her when he found her, would have taken her here and tried his best to help her, to raise her properly. However, it was a much more enjoyable task given that he genuinely liked her, not just for sharing his blood and being his responsibility, but simply for being herself. What he wanted, now, was to find a way to allow her to simply  _be_ herself, unfettered by the shackles of her fear.

It was with all of this in mind that Severus made a move that he knew would be, in the short term, excruciating for both of them. A few days after her terrible nightmare, when she'd woken screaming and convinced of a knife in her back, he set their breakfast table with goblets of pumpkin juice instead of mugs of coffee. He even put his carafe away in a high cupboard, where she couldn't reach it to make herself coffee as soon as he left the flat, which he knew was precisely what she'd have done otherwise.

She entered their little kitchen, sat down in her customary chair, and reached her left hand out. She was halfway to her goblet before she realised that it was, in fact, a goblet. She furrowed her brow, looked to see that he had the same in front of him.

"New cups?" she questioned, pulling her knees under her and kneeling on the chair so she could see into the top of the goblet.

"Something like that," Severus said, bracing himself for what he knew was surely to come.

Calista slid the goblet closer to her, peered over the rim of it, sniffed at it suspiciously.

"What is this stuff?" She sounded less than impressed.

"It's pumpkin juice," he said, "A lot of the students like it."

"Er," she said, "Thanks, I guess, but I'd rather just have coffee."

"About that," he said, fingering the stem of his own goblet, "Coffee isn't good for you. It's not very healthy for children, and besides, I've read a few things recently-"

"Are you saying I can't have any coffee?" she interrupted, sounding every bit as thrilled by the idea as he'd expected - which was to say, as thrilled as he would be to have a flock of pixies ransack his study.

Well. If she was going to cut to the chase, there was no reason for him not to join her. "That's correct."

She pushed the goblet away from her, set her face in a stony pout, and crossed her arms.

"Why?"

"Oh, do you want my reasons? Because I assumed, when you interrupted me, that you didn't really care to know them."

"This is a stupid rule," she declared, "I don't like it."

"Welcome to rules," he said drily.

She glared at him for several seconds, during which time he calmly sipped from his own goblet. He'd get some tea or coffee in the staff lounge later, but she didn't need to know that.

"So," she prompted, "What's the stupid reason for the stupid rule?"

"There are no stupid reasons, only two sound ones. Would you like to hear them?" he asked casually.

"Fine." She cast a menacing look at the goblet, as if it were the one that had decided to set itself on the breakfast table where her coffee should have been.

"Firstly, as I said, it's not healthy for you. It can make your heart race and stunt your growth. Secondly, I read recently that the caffeine in it may be contributing to your nightmares."

She softened slightly, acquiesced enough to start eating the cereal he'd set in front of her. Well, that was a start.

"Now, I could have tried to trick you by giving you decaffeinated coffee, but I thought you'd rather have the truth, even if you didn't like it. Besides, I wasn't lying, a lot of the students do like pumpkin juice. You should at least give it a try."

Calista only cast the goblet a dark look and continued to eat her breakfast. They ate more or less in silence the rest of the meal, until Severus had to leave to teach his first class.

As soon as she heard the door to the flat close behind him, Calista knelt on her chair again, and reached for the goblet. She sniffed at it curiously, then lifted it to her mouth with both hands, took a tiny sip. Immediately, she made a face, swirled it around in her mouth a little, then swallowed.

Her expression cleared when she realised that in fact it actually didn't taste half bad. She took another, longer sip, then pulled it closer to the edge of the table so she could reach it properly when she sat down again.  _Fine_ , it wasn't that bad, but her father still wasn't off the hook for taking her coffee away. She decided to pretend to hate it for a few more days before she finally let him see her cave, just out of principle, even if his reasons did seem more or less as sound as he'd said they were.

**(¯ˆ·.¸¸.·ˆ¯)**

As it always seemed to, the first part of the semester flew by for Severus, and Christmas Break was soon upon them. Most of the students went home, and Severus had a lot more free time. Two things occurred to him simultaneously, a few days before Christmas. One was that he had now had custody of Calista for nearly a full year. The second was that, since he had found Calista in January, after Christmas, it would be his first Christmas in a number of years as part of a family.

The year before he'd started teaching, he'd gone to visit Lucius and Narcissa Malfoy for the holiday, but since then he'd stayed at the castle and had a quiet dinner and a few glasses of wine with the other professors that had stayed behind. It had been a bit awkward the first year, being by far the youngest of them all, and not too recently a student in many of their classes, but last year had been enjoyable. Still, he thought that it might be nice, in a different way, to have a child around for Christmas.

In the days before Christmas, he picked out several gifts for Calista, and decided that it would be nice for them to stroll through the castle and grounds together on Christmas Eve, when parts of the castle would be decorated and lit up prettily. Perhaps he could even get permission from Dumbledore to bring her to the Great Hall for dinner on Christmas, since many of the students wouldn't be there. He wondered what she would make of the enchanted ceiling.

On Christmas Eve, when he told her of his plans for them to tour the castle, she seemed enthusiastic. He did have a few assignments from the last classes he'd taught before the break to grade, and he did those in his office during the afternoon, while Calista drew unidentifiable pictures on sheets of parchment he'd given her to use. Whatever talents she had, art was decidedly not one of them; he had absolutely no idea what she was drawing, but it kept her happily occupied, so he was content to let her scribble away. She gave him one of the pictures as a present. He thought it might have been either a volcano or a cauldron, but he knew better than to ask, so he just hung it up in his office with a Sticking Charm and thanked her for it.

When he was finished grading papers, it was dusk, so he gave Calista the first of the gifts that he'd picked out for her: a warm cloak and gloves, so she wouldn't freeze when they went outside in the dark. It was a good thing, too, because as they climbed the stairs to the first level of the castle, he saw through a window that it was snowing outside, very lightly.

It was a pleasant walk, through the castle. She liked to watch the moving portraits, and the moving staircase fascinated her as well. Three times, he had to wait on the landing for her so she could run up and down it to see if it would go somewhere new. She was impressed, as well, by the Christmas trees that were placed at random intervals in the corridors, most of them lit up and decorated with garlands.

She asked him a lot of questions, about the people in the portraits and which classrooms were which, but whenever they walked past another person, she quieted until she judged they were out of earshot. Severus sighed inwardly, wishing she'd try, just once, to talk to someone besides himself, but he decided that they were having too nice a time for him to ruin it by starting that particular argument.

After they toured most of the main areas in the first few levels, they went outside. Some of the trees on the grounds had been strung up with lights, and the great oak doors had wreaths on them. Candles shone in some of the windows, too, and he had to wait while Calista counted them all.

A scattering of fluffy white snowflakes fell from the sky, though not enough for them to accumulate on the ground. Calista tried to count those too, but when she got to a hundred, she gave up and started catching them on her tongue instead.

"Did you know that no two snowflakes are alike?" he asked her, as she marched in front of him with her head tilted back and her tongue out.

"Eh?" she turned to him, but kept her mouth open. He chuckled.

"They're all just a bit different from all the other snowflakes," he said. "No one's ever found two that were precisely the same."

She pulled her tongue back in her mouth, and held out one of her gloved hands. When several flakes had landed on the black wool, she held her hand up to her face, scrutinizing them closely. Then, she huffed out a sigh, clouding the air in front of her.

"How can anyone tell?" she asked, "They melt too fast to get a good look."

"I suppose they bring them into a very cold laboratory to study them," he said, "Although, come to think of it, I'm not sure why anyone would want to bother."

They stayed out for a few more minutes, then Severus told her it was time to head back inside the castle for dinner. When they stepped back into the entrance hall, Calista noticed a sprig of mistletoe that was hanging up, and pointed to it.

"That's mistletoe, right?" she asked. Severus nodded.

"The thing I don't understand," she said, and Severus really hoped that he wasn't about to have to explain the ridiculous tradition of kissing under the mistletoe to her, because it didn't make much sense to him, either, "Is why mistletoe berries are used in an Antidote to Common Poisons, when they have poison  _in_  them. Wouldn't that just make someone sicker?"

Severus stopped in his tracks, looked down at her. He was so surprised by her question that he completely missed Albus Dumbledore waving at them from beside the door to the Great Hall.

"How do you know that?" he wondered, facing her. "That's not in any of the books we've been reading together."

"The list," she said, "Of the two hundred most commonly used ingredients. I found a book on your shelf that has a bunch of them.  _Magical Droughts and Potions_ , I think. I've gotten a hundred and three of them so far. That's how I knew it was mistletoe. 'White, waxy berries', right?"

She was still looking up and over his shoulder at the plant, with her head cocked slightly to the right, as if she were not quite certain of its identification, still.

Severus' face spread into a rare grin, but he did successfully repress the laugh that threatened to burst out of him when she'd said the title of the book. Magical droughts, indeed. Still, she was actually doing the assignment he'd given her, months ago now, when she'd nearly blown up his workroom? He was both surprised and very pleased.

"Yes, that's correct," he said, "The reason for using it in an antidote is the acid in the berries; they help to accelerate the breakdown of poisons by bezoars. However, the entire potion only uses two berries because a few of the other compounds in the berries are poisonous; there just aren't enough of those poisons in only two berries to do much harm."

While they spoke, facing each other in the entrance hall, the Headmaster had stepped a few paces closer, but drawn short of directly approaching them, opting instead to watch the parent-child interaction with a benevolent sort of curiosity.

"So you could eat a bunch of mistletoe berries, and then take a potion with mistletoe in it to cure yourself? That's weird."

"You could," Severus said, "But you'd likely have a stomachache. I wouldn't recommend it."

"What if you ate a bunch of mistletoe berries," she asked, "and you didn't have time to make an antidote? Could you just eat a bezoar and two more berries? Or would the berries you already ate help the bezoar work faster?"

"Actually," he told her, "You don't really need the berries at all. You can counteract most poisons with just a bezoar. The reason we generally make an antidote potion instead is to conserve ingredients; bezoars are much harder to find than mistletoe berries, and you can make, say, thirty doses of antidote for one bezoar, instead of just one. The only other rare ingredient in the antidote is unicorn horn, but at a ratio of thirty-to-one, it's still more economical to brew the potion than to start handing out bezoars-"

And here, Albus Dumbledore did approach the pair, laying a hand genially on Severus' shoulder. "Merry Christmas, Severus," he said heartily, a twinkle in his blue eyes. He smiled at the little girl, who went suddenly quiet. "and Calista," Albus added, "Won't both of you come and join me in the Great Hall? There's an excellent feast tonight."

Calista looked suddenly drawn, as if the prospect of eating dinner had become an unwelcome obligation, but Severus smiled at her encouragingly, reaching for her hand; reluctantly, she took it, and the three of them headed into the Great Hall.

There were a few teachers at the High Table, and a small scattering of students at the house tables, but the majority of them had gone home for the holiday.

"I'd suggest we sit at one of the house tables," Dumbledore said, "But I can't risk being said to show favoritism, so I say we should allow young Calista to sit at the staff table, just this once."

He winked at her, as if the shared some kind of secret. She wrinkled her nose, and looked up at her father questioningly.

"She can sit beside you, Severus," Dumbledore continued, "Professor Kettleburn's gone home for Christmas, and I daresay it won't hurt him to have his seat borrowed for the evening."

"Thank you, Albus, that will do nicely," Severus said.

They drew up to the staff table, and Severus helped Calista into the seat beside his; the Headmaster sat in his usual chair, at Severus' other side. There was a difficult moment where Calista's eyes roved the Great Hall, taking in the students seated below them with wide eyes, and Severus was afraid she might bolt, but then she caught sight of the enchanted ceiling, and he caught a small smile on her face again.

She leaned over, tilted her head up to whisper in his ear.

"I can see the stars through there," she said, and he could hear, even in her whispery voice, that she was impressed.

"It's enchanted," he told her, in his regular speaking voice, "It always shows the sky outside."

She considered this a moment, and while she did, platters laden with food began to appear on all the tables. Severus filled his own plate, and added things to hers that he thought she ought to eat, vegetables and turkey and a bit of roast. He smirked when he saw her reach eagerly for the glass of pumpkin juice that had appeared by her plate.

After she had eaten a few bites, she leaned up to whisper to him again.

"What if a dragon went by outside?" she asked, "Would we be able to see it on the ceiling?"

Severus had had an idea, though; he pretended that he hadn't heard her question. After a short silence, she asked it again, and he again pretended not to hear.

She tugged on his sleeve, then, and he looked down at her.

"Oh, I'm sorry, Calista, were you speaking to me? I can't hear you whispering over the din in here." He tried to sound sincere, but wondered if she'd see through his plan.

He thought she must have, because she scowled and turned back to her plate, pushing a few pieces of potato around with her fork. She took another sip of pumpkin juice, and then, evidently, her curiosity got the better of her, because she tried again, a little bit louder.

"What if there were dragons," she said, "outside? Would we see them from in here?"

"Hm?" he chewed a mouthful of roast, tilted his head as if he were still having trouble hearing her.

" _Dragons_ ," Calista finally said, loudly, exasperated. "Could we see them in the ceiling?"

"You know," Dumbledore said, turning to look at her around Severus, "I don't believe that it would show us dragons if there were any outside; it's a pity, isn't it? I should like to know if we had any flying overhead."

Calista's face drained of color, and her shoulders tensed momentarily.

"Well, there you have it," Severus said lightly, "If anyone would know the answer to that question, it's the Headmaster of the school."

Slowly, she relaxed. She took another bite of her dinner, another sip of pumpkin juice. Then, she did the most remarkable thing, in Severus' eyes; she leaned forward, to look past Severus at Dumbledore.

"Why doesn't it?" she asked him. It was the first time in literally years that she had spoken to anyone besides Severus, and again, the question was  _Why?_  He was beginning to notice a pattern, here.

"That's a very good question," the Headmaster said indulgently, "One to which I can only guess at the answer. Perhaps the witches and wizards who enchanted it never thought of it. I had never thought of it before, but now that you mention it, I do rather wish they had." He winked at her, as if they shared a secret.

Calista was mostly quiet the rest of the meal, except to ask Severus a few more questions about the ingredients she had found mention of in the first-year textbook she'd found in his study. Severus was happy to answer them, feeling especially indulgent since she'd finally spoken in front of another person; now, at least, Dumbledore would know that he'd been telling the truth.

After dinner, they went back to their flat in the dungeons. Severus looked at Calista when they returned. "Why don't you get me the list you've been working on?" he said, "Let me see which ones you've found so far."

She went down the hall to her bedroom, and he heard a drawer open and close. Then she returned, several loose sheets of parchment in hand, and held them out to him. He took them from her, shuffled through them. She  _had_  found quite a lot of them, although her handwriting was so atrocious that he was hard-pressed to figure out which ones. She was watching him so eagerly though, undoubtedly hoping for praise, that he didn't quite have the heart to say so.

"This is a good start," he said, instead, "But why don't we go to the library this week? I think there might be some books there that will be easier for you to look through than the one you have been."

"Together?" she asked, and Severus nodded.

"I've never been to a library," she said, "But I know what it is. It's a big room with lots and lots of free books, right?"

"Well, they're free to borrow," he said, "But you have to take very good care of them, and bring them back when you're finished."

"Like I do with your books?"

"Precisely," he said, handing her back her papers. "Now, what would you like to read before bed tonight?"

"Can we read from my cat book?"

Severus winced; why had he given her a choice? He hated that book, hated all the pictures of simpering, fluffy kittens. "Must we?" he asked.

"You asked what I would like," she said, "I just told you the truth. I'm supposed to do that, right?"

He looked at her face, and scowled. While her tone was sincere, she couldn't quite hide a little smirk. She  _knew_  he hated that book. Perhaps that was precisely why she had picked it.

"Fine. We'll read the bloody book. Just don't expect me to like it."

"That's half the fun," Calista admitted gleefully, "I especially like the part when you call the tiger cats 'sodding little hairballs'."

**(¯ˆ·.¸¸.·ˆ¯)**

Christmas Day was rainy and gray. They ate breakfast in their little kitchen, and then Severus gave Calista the rest of her presents. There was another cat book, which he had seriously considered withholding after last night, and a blank sketchbook and a pack of crayons. She seemed very pleased with these; she told him that Jessica at the orphanage had owned some crayons, but had never let Calista use them. She'd taken them out immediately, curled up in one of the chairs in his study with the book and crayons.

He'd given her two other things, also: an enchanted glass globe that held a tiny bit of witchfire that was guaranteed to stay lit for at least a year, that she could keep on her wardrobe so her bedroom wouldn't be quite so dark at night, and a soft toy that looked like a cat, which she had not been nearly as impressed with.

"What's this?" she'd asked, her nose wrinkled in confusion.

"It's a toy," he said, "Children… children like to hold them, at night. I think."

"Does it do anything?" She'd poked its little pink nose dubiously.

"Well, no," he'd had to admit, "But you can keep it in your bed, with you."

She'd raised her eyebrows, shrugged, and put it on top of her wardrobe with the little nightlight. Well, it had been worth a try. At least she liked the crayons.

The next day, he'd taken her to the library. He'd planned on them spending some time in there, but Madam Pince looked as though she'd rather host a dragon than a small child, so after suffering a few minutes of cold glares, he checked out  _The Essential Potion-Maker's Toolkit_  and  _The Cauldron Companion_ , two very basic potions books that he thought might be easy enough for her to read on her own, and they returned to the dungeons.

Later, while she was busily flipping through the pages and making additional scrawls on her list, Severus went to the Headmaster's office, where he'd been invited for tea. (With Albus Dumbledore, it was always tea).

When he sat down, Albus had smiled at him jovially. "I hope you had a good Christmas, Severus."

"I actually did," Severus reflected, "Thank you. How was yours?"

"Ah, as delightful as always," Dumbledore said, but of course an astute listener would recognize that for a very ambiguous response.

"Thank you for inviting Calista to sit at the staff table," Severus said. "I think she enjoyed herself."

"That's good to hear. I must say, Severus, she's come a long way from the child I first met, more than a year ago."

Severus nodded. "I try. It's a bit of progress, every day."

Albus sipped at his tea. "More than a bit, I would say," he said, matter-of-factly, "For someone who professed to knowing nothing about raising children, Severus, you're doing quite an admirable job."

Severus felt a relief he hadn't even been aware he'd needed; he looked down, under pretense of stirring his tea.

"Can you tell, Severus, that your daughter simply adores you? It was plain to my eyes immediately, as it must be plain to anyone else who sees you two interact."

Severus felt a warmth spreading throughout him that had little to do with the hot tea. "I do think she's beginning to trust me," he said quietly.

"Hm, indeed, that is one way to put it," Dumbledore said, a direct stare aimed at Severus. "Another would be to say that you are, in fact, that child's personal hero."

Severus glanced at Albus; could the older man possibly know how much Severus needed to hear those words? Of course he could; he knew everything, or so it often seemed.

"Thank you," Severus said, and it was all he needed to say.


	10. "Do you have bad things too?"

Severus and Calista worked through the rest of her list together, using the books he'd checked out from the Hogwarts library. Every few days, they would spend an hour or two going over some ingredients on the list; sometimes he quizzed her on ones they had studied before, and when she answered incorrectly, he'd try them again in a few days, and on and on until she could remember correctly. Even though he hadn't quite expected her to actually write up the list, he  _had_  meant what he'd said about no more practical lessons until he could be certain she wasn't going to invite disaster again.

They went for walks on the weekends, more often through the interior of the castle now that winter had really set in. She was always full of questions, and her favorite one was  _Why?_ But she was also a good listener, when she wanted to be, so Severus didn't mind explaining things to her, most of the time. He tried to see what Dumbledore had told him, that Calista thought so highly of him, but how could he really tell? Their conversations tended to be mainly factual, and he wasn't even certain which of them kept steering them that way.

The exception was always after one of her nightmares, but he could hardly relish their closeness then, when it was being practically forced on them by her vulnerability in those moments. They certainly had their good times, the days when they had easy conversations and comfortable banter, the days when she drew him incomprehensible pictures that were not in any way aided by the addition of colour, and he hung them up and pretended to know what they were.

But then, always, a night would come when it seemed as if it all was crashing down around them; she would revert to a feral thing, terrified and near-broken, and it would seem all the more tragic in light of what he could now see she  _could_  have been like.

The day after a nightmare, she would always pretend as if had never happened, would refuse to talk about it, turned cold and stony when he tried to coax her to. He understood, on some level, that it was her coping mechanism, but he felt like the parameters of their relationship were constantly in flux. Some days, she would take his hand when they went somewhere together, would sit close to him, smile at him. Other days, she kept her distance, and flinched if he tried to touch her, answered only when spoken to. On those days, it was hard to believe that Dumbledore's assessment was accurate.

Less than a month after Christmas, he was startled from a sound sleep by what he took to be her screaming again. As he fumbled in the dark for his wand, he made himself listen with only his ears. Like nearly every other time, the scream was only in his head. He still wasn't certain how that was happening, but it was, and groggily went for her room.

The nightlight he had given her for Christmas cast a faint bluish light around the room, by which he could see that this time, she was already awake when he entered her room. She was sitting up in her bed, hands frantically clawing at her back again. Her eyes were wide, black in the half-light.

"Are you all right?" he asked, knowing his own voice was still thick with sleep.

It was as if she hadn't heard him; she stared straight ahead, eyes wide but evidently unseeing, fingers working to pull out a blade that wasn't there.

He spoke her name, shook her shoulders, reassured her that she was safe enough times for him to lose count, and it was as if he wasn't even there. Finally, after what felt like hours but in reality was only moments, she seemed to slowly realise where she was, who she was with.

"Is she gone?" she whispered, again, as Severus gently took her hands from behind her back and held them. She was shivering again, all over.

"She's gone," he said, "You're safe."

"She'll come back," Calista said, and she sounded so certain, so final.

"No," he reminded her, for what felt like the umpteenth time, "She can't."

He pulled her close; she started, but then lifted her eyes to his. Perhaps this somehow reassured her of who he was - or, more importantly - who he wasn't - because after that, she gingerly settled into his embrace.

"Do you want to talk about your dream?" he asked, for the first time, because he'd seen it in a book, and none of his other ideas were working.

"I don't know," she said, her voice small. She was still shivering. Severus reached for an extra blanket at the foot of her bed, draped it over her shoulders even though he didn't think the temperature had anything to do with it.

"It doesn't feel like I'm dreaming," she said, after a few minutes of silence. "It's like I'm back there again. Everything looks just the same.  _She's_  just the same."

She shivered fiercely. Inexplicably, she extracted herself from his arms, pulled the blanket tight around herself, and retreated to lean her back against the headboard of her bed.

"She… when she starts cutting me, it hurts," she said, so quietly that he had to strain to hear her. "My other dreams, when she curses me with her wand, or chases me, those ones don't feel so real once I wake up, but the knife dream always does."

He could see her shoulders quaking underneath the fabric. Severus himself suddenly felt cold, and folded his arms.

"Have you… do you have that dream often?" Severus ventured.

"I didn't used to," she said, "But now I have it a lot."

"Since when?" he asked, "How long have you been having this particular dream?" Perhaps there was a reason, something about her routine or her diet that could explain the increased frequency of this particular nightmare. If he could pinpoint when she had started having it more, maybe he could help her find a way  _not_  to have it anymore.

"A few months, I guess," she said, hesitantly. She closed her mouth, clutched the blanket tighter around herself, and looked down at her knees. Still, Severus felt there was something else she wasn't saying. She sat, quietly, for several minutes. Gradually, her trembling stopped, though she didn't loosen her grip on the blanket.

"Do you think anything is different lately, that could be causing you to have this dream?" he prompted her.

She nodded, and looked up again, but evidently Severus was going to have to pry the answer out of her, because, again, she didn't speak until prompted.

"Well? Anything you want to share with me?"

"I feel happy sometimes," she said, in a rush, the words tumbling over each other. She blushed, something he didn't think he'd ever seen her do. Then, she took a stabilising breath, set her jaw, and in an instant, he was sitting next to the Calista of daytime, the one who was stubborn and proud and didn't want to talk about her emotions. "I don't think she likes that," she continued, matter-of-factly.

By now, Severus knew that her bravado was often manufactured, but he also knew that he had to pretend to buy it, or she might shut down and refuse to speak about the dream anymore at all. He suspected that if he didn't play his cards right, she'd ask him a question about cauldrons or castor oil next, as if it weren't two in the morning and she hadn't just woken him, yet again, from a sound sleep with the ferocity of her alarm.

"I expect she might not, if she were aware of it," he said, deceptively light.

"She must be," Calista said, and if he had not begun to know her as well as he did, he almost certainly would have missed the trembling of her chin, the glimmer of fear in her eyes. "Why else would the dreams get worse now?"

Severus looked at her for a long moment. It was easy, most of the time, to forget that Calista was only seven years old, because she had the articulation of an avid reader already, an understanding of words and a precocity that often made her seem older. But that didn't mean that her understanding of the world was as similarly mature, and Severus was reminded, in that instant, that seven was after all still very young. Perhaps too young to see that there were no monsters under her bed; only the ones in her mind.

"Bellatrix did a lot of very bad things to you," Severus said carefully, "And I can only imagine that, for a sizeable portion of your life, it must have felt as if she was everywhere, all the time, that you couldn't escape her. But, Calista, you  _have_  escaped her. She isn't under your bed, or in your wardrobe, or even waiting on the other side of the door to our flat. She's in a prison, behind iron bars and hundreds of guards, and across leagues of sea."

Calista was fixed on him as he spoke, her dark eyes very serious in her small, pale face. Severus continued earnestly.

"There is no doubt that the things she did to you were,  _are_ , very painful. But it's important that you realise that all of those things have already happened. Sometimes, your memory of these things can feel very much like the present, but try and remember that it's  _not_."

"I guess that makes sense," she said, doubtfully, and he could see her waver, caught between her desire to appear cool and unafraid, and the fact that she wasn't really either of those things, tonight.

"I'm certain it doesn't right now," he said, "But try and think of that, when you feel afraid, when you have bad dreams. Try to remember that it's all over, now."

It was good advice; Severus privately thought that he'd do well to remember to follow it for himself, now and again. Like any other healthy thing, it was far easier said than done.

"I can try that," she said, and nodded. There was something in the forced, fierce set of her little jaw that made Severus ache; he wasn't certain if it was with pride, amusement, or sadness. Perhaps a little of all three. He wanted, suddenly, to hug her again, to give them both a physical reminder of the fact that neither of them was quite all alone, anymore.

Instead, he rose, took three steps over to her wardrobe. He lifted up the little soft cat toy that he'd bought her for Christmas, tossed it gently onto the bed.

"Here. You have at least two or three more years before you're allowed to say you're too old to sleep with soft toys, so cuddle the blasted cat and get some sleep now, would you?"

He noted, as he left her room, that she managed a tired, weak smile at that. And she picked up the cat.

**(¯ˆ·.¸¸.·ˆ¯)**

In the morning, Calista was tired and wan-looking, her eyes heavy and shadowed, and she could only manage to pick at her food.

"Maybe you should go back to sleep after breakfast," Severus suggested, wishing that he could do the same. These nights were a drain on him, as well, but what choice did he have?

Calista shook her head. "I'm not tired."

"You're not a good liar, either," he said, and she glared at him half-heartedly.

Throughout his morning classes, he again considered the conversation he'd had with Albus Dumbledore, months prior, on the subject of modifying Calista's memory. Since he'd first considered the idea, Calista had come so far. She spoke to him regularly, had even spoken to Dumbledore at Christmas, and she was demonstrating a hunger for learning that he personally found admirable. She had begun to smile and laugh, had proven beyond a shadow of a doubt that she had a survivor's soul.

But was surviving enough? Calista had admitted that she was beginning to feel happy, but her nightmares were taking their toll on her, and it didn't seem as if they were getting better; in fact, if anything, they were increasing in severity and frequency, despite everything he'd tried to alleviate them.

He was beginning to equate memory modification to the Night Blossom Draught, in his mind. Neither of those things were meant to be used on children, and either could prove extremely detrimental if handled incorrectly, but with the latter, he had found that, in her particular set of circumstances, the benefits had outweighed the risks. He couldn't help but wonder if they were nearly at that cusp with memory modification, too.

It wasn't a decision he could make alone, though. Albus was correct when he'd set that it would likely take both of them to do it correctly; removing memories that were so deeply ingrained would take considerable skill and finesse, and he'd feel more comfortable pooling their talents. Albus had also stipulated that Calista would have to demonstrate an understanding of and desire for the modification, herself, before he could consider it, so perhaps that was where he ought to start.

It was Friday, so all of his classes were in the morning. He held office hours in the afternoon, and occasionally supervised detentions, but most of the time, he was finished with work by mid-afternoon, and that particular day followed the pattern.

He summoned Calista to his study when he was finished with work, invited her to sit in one armchair while he took the other.

"There's something I need to discuss with you," he began, as she curled herself up in the chair, feet drawn up underneath her, and chin on her knees. Gods, she looked so young. How could he possibly hope to communicate this in a way that she would understand?

"It seems as if the majority of your nightmares contain real memories," he said, "Things that have happened to you in the past, that resurface when you're sleeping."

She looked at him warily, and he could see her tense, debating whether to stay in the room or not. Predictably, now that the sun was out, she wanted to pretend last night had never happened.

"There is a procedure, a magical process that might be able to… to remove some of those painful memories, so that your mind would no longer have access to them. It's not a guarantee, and it carries a lot of risks, but perhaps, in your case, it might be helpful in the long run to consider it…"

And now, he had her attention. She tensed in an entirely different way, leaning forward, her hands coming down on the arms of the chair. There was an instant intensity, an eagerness, in her face.

"You mean, you can do magic on me, and take away all the… all the bad things?"

"Not exactly," he said. Ironically, even though he wanted to alter her memory, he wouldn't outright lie to her. "It's not that simple, although I wish it were. There is no magic in the world that is powerful enough to change the past. But the memories of those things, the images and sounds, we might be able to erase from your mind, or at least stop them from coming to the surface all the time."

"If I didn't remember, it would be like it never happened," she countered, and he could hear the eagerness in her voice, now. He wished he could simply tell her that yes, that's what would happen, but it wouldn't be fair to set her up with unrealistic expectations of what he could and could not achieve through memory modification.

"Taking away the  _memories_  of the events doesn't take away the events, Calista," he warned, "No matter what you remember about it, you will always have those scars on your back, and you may even still have nightmares about your past, although, when you woke up, you probably wouldn't remember the dreams."

"I don't care," she said, "It has to be better than… than that dream, all the time."

"It's also very difficult, and dangerous," he said, "It's very advanced magic, and any time that you alter the mind, there is the potential for something to go wrong. Some of the memories might be only partially removed, and you could wind up losing some good memories, too. It's even possible that your personality would be altered in some way, or that you would lose some of your ability to hide your thoughts with Occlumency. You don't just change one thing, Calista. Everything, every memory and every thread of thought in your mind, would have to shift to fit the new pattern."

"But it has to be a good thing, right?" she asked, "To be able to forget?"

"It… can be," he said quietly, "I want you to think very hard about this before you decide. It is not an easy thing to consider."

"Can't I just decide now?" she set her feet on the floor, leaned towards him. "I want to forget. Can we do it today?"

Severus looked at her solemnly. "I don't know if you fully understand what I'm saying. It's a lot more than simply 'forgetting'. Your mind is complex; it is not like a series of photographs where we can simply throw away the ones you don't like. Fragments of those memories might linger, no matter how carefully we extract them. They might still cause you to have disturbing dreams. Your emotions would not be affected at all, regardless of whether their associated memories remain intact—,"

He stopped. He could see in her face that he'd lost her, that she'd stopped listening, probably couldn't understand precisely what he was saying. He'd forgotten, again, how young seven actually was.

"Right," he said, "I'm going to explain that a bit differently. Ahm…" he cast around for an explanation the child might understand.

"Your bad dreams, Calista. When you first wake up you remember them well, correct?"

She nodded.

"What about later on that day? Or the next day? Or at the end of the week? Do you still remember the details of the dream?"

"The kn- the really bad one, I can," she said, "I remember that one all the time."

"And the other ones?" he asked, "Can you usually remember, say, a month after your last bad dream, precisely what was in it, if you haven't had it again since?"

She shook her head. "I remember that it was scary," she said, "And that it was about  _her_. But the rest of it, I forget. Unless she has - unless it's  _that_  dream, again."

"What if you had a dream," he posed, "About a bear that was chasing you? And then in the morning you only remembered that you had a bad dream, but not what it was about. If you saw a bear later that day, would you still be afraid of it?"

Calista stared at him. "Well," she said, uncertainly, "I think I would be afraid if I saw a bear even if I didn't dream about one chasing me. They're really big."

"Fine, perhaps that was a bad example," he reflected. "What if… hm… what if you had a dream that our kitchen table was chasing you around, trying to attack you? Would you still want to sit at it for breakfast the next morning?"

"I guess not," Calista said, doubtfully.

"Erasing your memories is just like forgetting a dream. Even if we were somehow able to make you forget everything about your- about Bellatrix, the fear wouldn't change. You'd still feel afraid, threatened, whenever someone said her name, or showed you her picture, but you just wouldn't understand why you were afraid. And the truth is, we probably can't take  _all_  of your memories of her completely away, anyway. They're… they're part of you, now."

Calista frowned. "Then how do I make the bad things go away?"

Severus exhaled, then rose from his own seat, and crossed the distance between their chairs, settled into a crouch next to Calista's so he was level with her. A little awkwardly, he put his arm around her shoulders; she stiffened, and he could see a debate in her eyes, whether to allow this, or to push him away. Physical closeness was something she usually only tolerated in the immediate aftermath of a nightmare, but it didn't seem right, to Severus, to continue this conversation with so much space between them.

"I wish there was a spell that could do that, Calista," he said, candidly. "I… I have a lot of bad memories myself, and I understand your desire to be rid of them. If there were such a spell, I would already have cast it, but I'm afraid that the truth is that it is very easy to do horrible things with a wand, but there is no similarly easy way to undo any of those things."

Severus could not help but mask his own eyes as he spoke. This, what they were talking about, sat too close to his own ghosts, his own shadowed memories.

"Do you have bad things, too?" she asked, seeking answers in his face that he wasn't quite ready to give her, yet.

"I do," he said, quietly.

"Did you… did you do the magic on yourself? To forget?"

He shook his head, let his arm fall from around her shoulders so that he was holding both of her hands, instead, and looked her in the eyes. His memories, his hurt… he was hiding those, but he wanted her to see, at least, that he was sincere.

"I did not."

"Why?"

And of course, he should have expected that question, from her. Why hadn't he prepared himself for it?

"I suppose I thought that the things I learned from my experiences were too important to forget," he said. He looked down at their hands, her tiny ones held securely in his, and it occurred to him that this, now, was another in a series of reasons why choosing to retain all of his own painful memories had been the right thing. There was love, and there was love after loss, and until he'd experienced the second, he hadn't know quite what the first was.

"Would you do it you were me?" she asked, her voice small. "Do you want me to forget?"

"Calista, those are two different questions," he said quietly.

It struck him suddenly how important his answer was. Calista was a child, a child that had been badly hurt, and she was depending on him, the adult who had come to rescue her, to make it right. Regardless of Severus' own past, and his feelings of inadequacy when it came to parenting, he was really all that Calista had, and she needed him. He wondered if he could stand the weight of that responsibility, for the rest of her life, but knew, somehow, that now that he'd shouldered it, it would be even harder to live without it.

"If I were in your place," he said, and he lifted her chin with one hand, transferring both of her hands to his other, "I would choose to remember, because knowledge, no matter how awful it is, is power...and there is a kind of strength you can gain only by overcoming terrible things. Some people are lucky, and they never need that strength, nor do they have cause to find it, but I have never been a lucky man, so I would want it, just in case."

He smiled sadly at her then, and pushed a tangle of dark hair back over her shoulder, before taking both of her hands again.

"But my answer to your other question contradicts that, I'm afraid. I do want you to forget. I want you to smile, and laugh, and sleep through the night, without needing to worry about how strong you are. When I tell you that you are safe, I want you to believe me, the first time."

Calista's eyes were shiny now; he wasn't certain how much of what he'd said she had understood, but it had seemed important, somehow, to tell her the utter truth. She pulled her hands out of his, and he thought that he had said the wrong thing, had managed to scare her off yet again. He sighed, prepared for her to bolt from the room.

But she didn't; she slipped off her chair, and right into his arms. "I'm really, really glad that I am a witch, after all," she said, tightly.

"And why is that?"

"Because," she said, "I like living here, with you. I would be really sad if I had to leave."

"Calista," he said, and he pulled back enough to look her square in the eyes, "I've told you, I will never make you leave. You're my daughter, before anything else. It wouldn't matter to me if you were a witch, or a Squib, or even a hippogriff."

She cracked a tiny smile, at that. "If I was a hippogriff, I wouldn't fit inside," she said.

"Then I guess we'd live outside." His tone was light, but the meaning behind it was anything but; he meant it. He hoped she could see that, by now.

"We couldn't do that," she said, earnestly, "If it rained, all of the books would get wet."

"Well, then," he said, "I guess we are very fortunate that you are not, in fact, a hippogriff."

"What if," she said, and her smile was suddenly decidedly mischievous, "What if I was a cat?"

"Then I'd turn you into a hippogriff," he said, drily. He meant that, too.


	11. "I'm watching them like they're through water."

They'd put the topic of memory modification on the back burner, for now. After their conversation, Severus wondered if he had managed to talk her into it and then back out of it in one day. He'd been honest when he'd told her that he, himself, would not have modified his own memory if he were in her place, even though, from his standpoint now as her guardian, of course he wanted her to forget the awful things she'd gone through. But it had been only fair to tell her the complete truth; he hadn't spent the last year earning her trust just so he could throw it away to make things easier.

Her nightmares, though, kept coming. They'd averaged one or two a month, before, and then she'd started having the one she called the "knife dream" when she was in the aftermath of it and simply "the really bad one" when it was daylight and she wanted to be oblique, and this one happened every other week or so. These nightmares were the ones that often drove him to give her a sleeping draught, but first he had to help her navigate her way back to reality, because she always woke from this one convinced that it was really happening.

Always, she would think there was a knife in her back; always, he told her there wasn't, but it took anywhere from five to fifteen minutes for her to believe him. In the meantime, she would hover on the edge of a panic attack, breathing quick and shallow, body trembling no matter the temperature.

He'd discussed it with Dumbledore again. Without revealing precisely what her dreams were about, he'd tried to convey how much they upset Calista, how difficult it was to anchor her in the present moment when she was caught in one. The older man believed that she would eventually outgrow them, and Severus wanted to believe him, but all the literature that agreed with Dumbledore's opinion also said that they would gradually taper off once the child had escaped trauma and felt safe, and that wasn't happening at all. They were getting  _worse_ , and by the time Calista's eighth birthday approached, she was having them as frequently as once a week.

She had another one, two nights before her birthday. She'd screamed out loud, again, clawed at him when he woke her. It had taken nearly a half hour for her to calm down enough to realise that Bellatrix wasn't really there, and before he'd gotten to her room, she'd managed to scratch  _herself_  as well, while trying to remove the imaginary knife, and the small amount of blood that she'd drawn had only contributed to her panicked delusion that she was really being attacked.

That had broken him down; he'd resigned to giving her a sleeping draught every night again, then. He didn't want her to develop a dependency on it, but he hoped that in choosing a mild one, he would minimise that risk. Enough was enough; neither of them was getting the sleep they needed, and it seemed cruel to allow her to keep reliving the same horrors again and again in her dreams, when he had the power to stop it, or come close, anyway.

It was all of this, he would later reflect, that drove him to do something utterly insane on her birthday, something he would come to regret passionately. He bought her a cat. A real, living (unfortunately) cat.

"Do you know what day it is?" he asked her, as they sat down to breakfast. He caught a wistful note of amusement in his voice. He would never have admitted it, even to himself, but he had always wanted to be surprised with something nice on his own birthday, when he was a child. It was a wish that had never been fulfilled.

Calista picked up a slice of toast, and started spreading jam on it. "Er…Tuesday?" she guessed, pulling a day out of thin air.

"Actually, it's Thursday," he said, "But that's not what I meant. Today is March the Fourteenth. Your birthday."

"Again?" she asked, sounding a little skeptical. "I already had one."

"Yes," he said, "A year ago. Now it's time for your next one. That's generally how it works."

A small, sly smile appeared on her face. "So I get another new cat book, then?"

There it was; the opportunity Severus could have, should have seized on. She wanted another cat book, would have been perfectly happy to receive just that for her birthday. But he couldn't shake the image of her from two nights prior, terrified out of her wits yet again by her worst memories, felt that he needed to give her something really special.

"Not this time. Instead, I have a few special things planned for you."

"You do?" she asked, dubiously. "Like what?"

"Well, for starters, like sweets." He drew his wand from his pocket, waved it at the centre of the table, and a small plate of Cauldron Cakes appeared. Calista never asked for sweets, and they almost never had them, so this was a treat.

Calista's eyes grew so round they nearly filled her face. "Sweets in the middle of  _breakfast_?"

"Well. Just this once. It is a special occasion."

Perhaps it was the novelty of it, or perhaps he had discovered her new favorite food, because she ate two of them in the space of as many minutes. Severus chuckled.

"I have to go to work now, but when I finish this afternoon, there's one more part of your present we need to go pick up."

For the first time in a long time, he took in her appearance objectively. Her hair was messy and tangled, and altogether she looked like a good wash was in order.

"We're leaving the castle, so it might be a good idea for you to tidy you hair and, er… wash the cake crumbs off your mouth," he suggested. "And wear something warm."

**(¯ˆ·.¸¸.·ˆ¯)**

As was his custom, Severus checked in on the flat quickly between each class. He didn't always see Calista, and he trusted that she'd be generally okay in the flat by herself, but the idea of leaving a seven – now, eight – year old alone for hours on end was unsettling, even if he did always charm the door to his workroom firmly shut and locked.

In between his third-year Slytherin/Griffindor class and his seventh-year NEWT students, he saw Calista in the small kitchen, pulling a comb through her stubborn hair, her pale face strained as she tugged on a nasty tangle and winced.

"I can help you with that," Severus offered, hesitantly. He remembered what had happened the last time someone had pointed a wand at her; she'd flailed and kicked and fled. "There's a spell that will untangle it."

She set down the comb, and eyed him warily. "Does it hurt?"

"No," he said, "Not at all."

She nodded, giving him permission. He drew his wand, and placed his other hand lightly on her shoulder. "Hold still," he cautioned, and waved the wand over her head in a complicated motion.

The tangled strands unraveled themselves, and straight, dark hair lay down her back, reaching almost to the back of her knees. The top parts were shiny-looking, but the ends were very frizzy and damaged. Severus knew absolutely nothing about the sorts of spells used for hairstyling, so he performed a simple Severing Charm to trim her hair to a more manageable length, removing the dead ends. When he finished, her hair hung more or less nicely to the middle of her back. It was cut a little unevenly, but he doubted she'd care, considering today was the first day he'd ever actually seen her attempt to comb it.

Calista looked down at the frizzy mass of hair that had fallen onto the floor, then reached up to feel how much she had left. "I don't look like a boy now, do I?" she asked, suspiciously.

"Definitely not," he said, and that satisfied her. He waved his wand, again, and the floor was clean. He had just enough time to eat a quick lunch, and then make it back to his classroom.

When he finished his last class of the day, and retreated to his office to get started on marking the day's assignments, he hadn't even closed his office door behind him when Calista appeared in the doorway, her face bright with anticipation.

"Where are we going?" she asked. She was already fully dressed and wearing her cloak. She had even remembered to wash her face. Severus bit back a sigh. He would have to correct these papers later, as it was clear she wouldn't be put off until later in the afternoon.

"We're going to Hogsmeade. It's a wizarding village."

"How far away is it?"

"Not far," he said, "Perhaps a twenty minute walk."

"What are we going to do there?" she asked, nearly bouncing in place with anticipatory energy. He hadn't realized she was so eager to leave the castle, but he reflected that they hadn't been outside as much, during the winter, and she was probably beginning to feel cooped up in the dungeons.

"We'll see," he said silkily, as if he hadn't made up his mind yet. Later, he would think of this as another opportunity where he could have abandoned his ill-advised plan.

As soon as they were outside, Calista ran ahead of him. He moved to stop her, and then he saw that she wasn't going far; she ran ahead only as far as the first tree, and then waited for him to catch up to her.

"This isn't Hogsmeade, is it?" she asked, looking up the height of the tree.

"Did I say it was a village or a pine tree?"

"Just checking."

Off she went again, stopping every now and then to question him.

"Is this Hogsmeade?" she asked breathlessly every time they came to a building on the grounds, or a fencepost, or a woodpile, or, for that matter, an unusually large rock.

"Have you seen anything even remotely resembling a village yet?" he asked, the fourth time.

"I don't know," he said, "I've never been to a village now, have I?"

He narrowed his eyes; was she being flippant, or did she really not know the word? He saw an unmistakable glint in her eyes - yes, she was having him on.

"I suppose this is your not-too-polite way of telling me that you want to go outside more often again?"

"Polite?" she echoed, "Sorry, don't know that one, either."

"You're insufferable."

"Okay, that one I really  _don't_  know, but I'm going to take it as a nice thing."

"You would," he said, but he was smiling.

They went into Honeydukes first, and he bought her some Every Flavour Beans, which she was enamoured with. Again, an opportunity to call it a day and prevent himself from making a horrible mistake.

As they walked to the next stop, Calista nibbled experimentally at a few of her beans. The first one, whatever it was, she liked, because she started hunting around in the bag for another of the same colour.

She took a bite of another one, and made an awful, scrunched-up face. "Ugh, here, try this one," she said, holding the other half of it out to him.

"What does it taste like?"

"Er, something fruity," she said, shifty-eyed.

"What does it really taste like?"

"Vomit," she admitted.

"Thank you, but I'll pass."

"How do they get the vomit flavour, anyway?" she wondered. "Do they take it from real vomit? Whose vomit? And  _why_?"

"I haven't the faintest idea of any of the three," he said.

"I mean, buttered toast? Pear? Those make sense, people eat those. But where are all the people that want to taste vomit, on purpose?"

He chuckled.

"Perhaps that's what you can do for work, when you grow up," he suggested lightly, "Taste-test all the vomit-flavoured beans."

He never got to find out what she thought of that suggestion, though, because they drew up to the door of their next stop just then: the Magical Menagerie II, a smaller spin-off of the Diagon Alley store, erected recently to try and squeeze more money out of the students after they'd arrived at Hogwarts.

Calista was entranced as soon as they entered, her eyes wide as she took in all the preening, chirping, meowing, squawking animals. He simply watched her face fill with astonishment as she looked around the store, which was actually less than half the size of its London counterpart.

The bag of flavoured beans hung limply in her hand, all but forgotten.

"Hallo there, Professor," The witch behind the counter greeted him. He wondered how she knew he was a Professor, since he'd never set foot in this wretched store in his life. "Can I help you find anything?"

She had a large wart on her nose and masses of frizzy grey ringlets. Her fingers looked knotted and were covered with gold rings of varying thicknesses.

"Not myself," he said, gently nudging Calista forward with a palm on her shoulder. And here was the moment where he made his mistake; evidently, he had learned nothing from the fact that she'd tried to get him to eat a piece of candy that tasted like vomit. "But this young lady would like to purchase a cat."

Calista turned to him, and her jaw dropped. For a fraction of a second, he forgot that he hated cats, and wondered why he hadn't brought her here sooner. He had seen her smile, and laugh, but he had never seen her eyes fill with such plain, unadulterated delight.

" _Really?"_  she said, her voice so tiny it was like a mew of a kitten itself. Severus nodded as casually as he could, enjoying the charade that this was a sudden whim. The look of sheer joy on her face was priceless, and refreshingly innocent.

"Ooh, a wee little kitten?" the witch said, false but well-intentioned enthusiasm welling up in her voice, "Well, let's see what we have, shall we?"

"A cat," Severus repeated, "No one said anything about a kitten."

Calista peered through the glass at the assortment of cats, and Severus followed her gaze. His line of sight was constantly interrupted by a grey blur – he supposed it was another cat, but it wouldn't stay still long enough for him to tell – that kept darting around in the enclosure, occasionally making a valiant attempt to climb the charmed walls of the clear cage. He wondered how Calista managed to see any of the other cats with that one zipping around the way it was. It was starting to get on his nerves, the way it demanded attention.

"Look over here," he said, pointing to a cat that was snoozing in the back corner of the enclosure. It looked ancient and exhausted, as if it were half-dead already. "This one's perfect for you."  _For me_ , he thought. Looking at the cage full of little monsters had reminded him, fiercely, of what he'd gotten himself into.

"I want that one," Calista announced, and Severus nodded, pleased that she had at least agreed with him, and picked the least annoying-looking one. Except… she wasn't pointing to the same one he was. She was pointing up, at the very top of the enclosure, where the zippy little grey thing was poking his head repeatedly at the top, trying to find a way out. It was indeed a cat - more precisely, a kitten. A tiny, mangy, good-for-nothing wretch of a kitten. Its little claws scraped at the glass; how had it even gotten that high up the smooth surface of the enclosure?

If Severus had known enough about small children to realise that, given an assortment of cute, furry animals to choose from, a child will  _always_ , without fail, choose the most rambunctious, annoying, and frankly maddening specimen there was, he would have pointed to the senior cat straightaway, and not given her a choice.

But it was too late now; the witch was already pulling the miserable little furball out of the enclosure. Twice, it almost got away while she was putting a charmed leash on it so that Calista could walk it home. Severus couldn't help but be slightly disappointed that it didn't get away before he paid for it, but the witch had managed to contain it, and so he was left to deal with the little monster as they left the shop.

Calista's small face was aglow as she held onto her end of the leash when they began their walk back to the castle. Severus caught himself thinking that it was almost worth the wretched, manic, shedding ball of fur that was about to claim his flat for its own simply for the joy it brought to Calista. Then the little kitten nipped at his ankle, and he changed his mind.

"Thank you," she said, when they had left the shop, "This is even better than a hundred cat books." The kitten scampered ahead, and Calista went along with it, its leash in one hand and her bag of Every Flavour Beans in the other.

"So," he said, once he'd caught up to her, "Did the woman in the shop tell you if it's a male or a female cat?"

"It's a boy," she said, "And his name is going to be Yellow."

 _That's bloody fabulous_ , he thought,  _So he can bite my ankles and piss on all of my things._ But all he said was, "He's grey."

"So?"

"So, why are you naming him Yellow?"

"Because I like yellow," she said, simply.

As if he agreed, the kitten paused to pee on some straggly dandelions that were pushing their way through the late-winter earth.

**(¯ˆ·.¸¸.·ˆ¯)**

When Severus and Calista finished going through the most common potions ingredients used, Severus decided to retry their failed attempt at practical learning. By the time they had reached this point, she had grown up a bit, at least enough to ask him what a particular word meant in a recipe, rather than simply ignore it.

Often, he would be preparing an ingredient while she pored over the page for the next step, and, too impatient to wait for him to come look at it with her, she'd ask him out loud what a word meant; but having never heard any of them before, her pronunciation was often comically wrong, especially if the word looked anything like another word she already knew. His favorite was when she had asked, quite seriously, how to "mice" dandelion roots.

"Mince," he'd corrected, and she'd rolled her eyes.

"No, not mint. It says dandelion roots."

"Not mint,  _mince_." He demonstrated, and then pointed to the word, helping her sound it out properly.

Just as it had before, their time in his workroom helped them get closer; he found that, when one or both of them had their hands occupied with something unrelated, Calista suddenly felt comfortable talking about the sorts of things she usually shied away from, unless it was the middle of the night and she'd had another nightmare. While he was powdering bicorn horn, she confessed that she was still a little nervous that she might not really have magic, especially since she didn't even seem to be blocking her thoughts with low-level Occlumency anymore.

"That's normal," he assured her, "Your magic comes out only when you really need it, when you're young. You haven't yet learned how to control it at will - but you can, some day. When you're older, I can teach you Occlumency the proper way."

"And the other one?" she'd countered, "Legiliwhatsit?"

"Not until you can say it," he teased drily. "But yes, some day."

Another day, while she stirred a cauldron, he asked her how she'd been sleeping. From his perspective, giving her the sleeping draught had seemed to cut down on the frequency her nightmares. Any other time, she would have answered simply,  _Fine_ , but this time, she elaborated

"Okay, I guess," she said, "It's… hm, I dunno… I have bad dreams, but I'm watching them like they're through water, or something. They're all fuzzy."

That didn't sound like a normal reaction to the sleeping draught, but perhaps it had something to do with her age. He filed the information away, to be researched on later.

"But they don't seem so real?"

"No," she said, "Not really."

"Good."

It was a slow process, but eventually Calista opened up more and more, revealing herself in bits and pieces. While they practised potions in his workroom, Severus learned that Calista's favorite thing to read about was still, of all things, magical theory, although she had a difficult time understanding most of what was in his books, so she mostly read her cat books and her beginners' potion books when she read by herself, and saved the other books for him to read to her, so she could pepper him with questions on the things she didn't understand. He had a strong suspicion that her interest in the lofty subject had more to do with lingering insecurities regarding her magical potential than anything else.

Severus remained convinced that Calista did have magical potential, although she had yet to demonstrate this in any way besides the bouts of occlumency she'd employed unwittingly when she was younger, and her clumsy attempts at legilimency with him. Now that she was in a safe environment, as was verbal, she didn't need either of those skills just yet, and they hadn't resurfaced in some time. Still, Severus knew that some children took longer than others to begin consistently showing potential, and though he recognised that Calista was past the age where most children would begin gaining awareness of their ability, he was certain it was there. How could it not be? Both himself and Bellatrix were quite powerful; it didn't seem likely that their offspring wouldn't follow suit. Besides, he'd seen the list in Dumbledore's office of future students, and Calista was on it.

Even when he told her this, though, Calista had remaining doubts. She even asked him if the list could make mistakes, which, to his knowledge, it could not.

In fact, there were a great many areas in which Calista doubted herself, and Severus found it somewhat disconcerting. He had never met another child who had so few aspirations, or so little self-esteem. It was things like this that reminded him so fiercely of himself as a child, but he had at least had Hogwarts to look forward to. Calista didn't quite believe that she would be able to attend, no matter how often he told her she would.

It seemed strange, actually, because she could be at once arrogant and extremely insecure - she confidently plowed ahead whenever they were working on a potion, pausing only when she was unsure of a word, but then, at the end, she would be genuinely surprised that it had come out right. But then, what had he been at her age, and even older, if not a mix of arrogance and uncertainty? Maybe it was a Snape thing.

Getting her to talk to someone besides himself was still remarkably difficult, too. Part of it, he suspected, was that she actually was shy, as people generally assumed, but he was also convinced that part of her simply enjoyed being difficult. How else to explain why, after that first conversation with Albus Dumbledore, she steadfastly refused to say much of anything beyond a dull, forced "Hullo"?

If someone asked her a direct question, she would answer, but nearly always in short, one or two word responses. But he had never realised before how many incredibly inconsequential things people thought to ask children about; he could hardly fault her for not answering enthusiastically to things like 'Do you like pumpkin juice?' and 'It's nice out, isn't it?'.

While they practised potions, Severus also learned trivial bits about his daughter, things he never would have given thought to before, but he found that once he knew these things, he was glad he did. He learned that her favorite flowers were daffodils for the colours, and lilies for a reason she could not articulate; Severus remembered seeing  _his_  Lily through her eyes when he had gone into her memories, recalled how she had wished that her mother had been more like the warm, red-haired woman, and he thought he knew why she liked that flower so well.

He learned that she liked to eat blackberries, didn't like sausage because of the skin on it, and, now that she had been introduced to it, would choose to drink pumpkin juice over almost anything else. "Unless I can have coffee again," she'd tried slyly, but he'd firmly told her no.

She wanted to have her ears pierced, but was afraid it would hurt, and she wanted to dress up and do things to her hair like she had seen other girls her age do at the orphanage, but was too self-conscious of her perceived unattractiveness to bother. In fact, he learned that there was a great list of things that Calista wanted to do, but was afraid of being mocked for. He learned that she was very good at hiding her feelings, but that she was easily hurt by things that other people said about her. She trusted others' assessment of her more than she trusted her own judgment, and she often second-guessed herself.

Calista was learning things about her father, too. She slowly came to understand that his cool tone and occasionally snarling responses didn't always mean that he was upset with her, but often meant that he was strained, or didn't know how to address a situation, or sometimes even only that he was tired. She reflected that it shouldn't have surprised her nearly so much to realise that he reacted to fatigue and stress much the same way that she did, by becoming combative.

She learned that her father, like herself, sometimes said things he didn't mean when he  _was_  angry, and that he had as difficult a time apologising as she did. She knew that he had some memories that were quite as sad as her own, but she didn't know what they were. She knew that he absolutely  _hated_  cats, especially Yellow, and she knew that he had no patience for people that chose not to learn.

Sometimes, Calista liked to see how far she could push her father. She kept asking to be allowed in the forest, even though if she were being honest, she didn't even really  _want_  to go in there; it did sound awfully scary, when he told her what sorts of things lived in there. But even though she knew that provoking him to anger wouldn't cause him to lash out and hurt her, she didn't really  _know_  it, inside, not until she'd tried many times.

She had never succeeded in making him resort to violence, and even Calista herself couldn't quite verbalise how happy this made her feel inside. She had, however, succeeded in being sent to her room a great many times, and she'd had to copy lines from what had to be the most boring books he could find more times than she cared to remember.

A few times, she'd been so unruly that she'd caused his eyes to flash dangerously, his face to turn red or white. The first time that happened, she'd been sure he was about to curse her after all, or maybe slap her, but even then, he never acted like the thought had even crossed his mind.

That time, when she'd gone wandering through the castle by herself while he was at work, she'd known from the start that she was asking for trouble. Her father had made it plain to her, on several occasions, that she was not to leave the flat by herself, that she must wait for him to accompany her if she wanted to go anywhere.

But she'd been in a restless mood, and it was Monday, which was his longest day of work, and she imagined that there were all sorts of amazing things going on about the castle. There were probably other cats around, too, ones that she could maybe take home to be friends with Yellow. She'd walked around for ages, ducking behind statues or into open doorways when she passed anyone else; she tried to take passages that didn't seem very populated, and though she hadn't found any cats, she  _did_  find the owlery.

She had never seen so many animals of any kind, gathered in one place; they flitted between rafters, making all sorts of interesting sounds. She mimicked one of the cries she heard; an owl came swooping down towards her, its talons extended…

And then, her father's hand had pulled her back just in time, and she realised too late that she'd only narrowly escaped having her face clawed up.

"Would you mind telling me what in the  _hell_ you're doing here?" her father had said, through gritted teeth, as he steered her out.

"I was bored," she said, "Aren't you supposed to be teaching right now?"

He'd gone red, then, and he'd actually  _trembled_ , he was so angry. His eyes flashed, and Calista wished suddenly, powerfully, that she'd just stayed inside. He was sure to hex her now, to shake her, or hit her.

" _I'm_  supposed to be - you're worried about what  _I'm_  supposed to be doing?  _You're_  supposed to be in the flat, and you know very damn well that you're not to leave it by yourself."

His hand had come out, and she'd flinched, but he'd only take her firmly by the shoulder again, started walking very quickly back down all the flights of stairs she'd only just climbed, steering her purposefully ahead of her.

"I was bored," she said again, knowing it would be wise to shut her mouth, but recklessly not quite able to do so, "And anyway, it's not  _fair_ , why do I have to stay inside all day?"

"Fair?  _Fair?!_ "

"Why do you keep saying everything twice?"

Of every decision she'd made thus far in her young life, asking that question had seemed, at the time, like quite possibly the worst one.

Severus had stopped walking abruptly, then, stomped angrily down a couple more stairs; she made to follow him, but he whirled to face her again, black cloak billowing out behind him, and put one of his hands on each of her shoulders, quite as firmly as he'd taken the one to guide her down the stairs.

"Listen to me," he had hissed, and then his voice rose steadily through the rest of what he said, "I went to look for you on my break between classes, so I could take you outside for a bit - get out of the castle, I thought - only, when I get there, you're nowhere to be found. I'm calling your name, over and over, checking the same places again and again, because there's  _no way_ you wouldn't be there, that's where you're supposed to be - so by the time I realise that, no, you're  _not_ there, you're already halfway across the castle, or maybe you're outside, maybe you went into the sodding forest -"

A student was climbing the stairs on his way to the owlery, then, but paused perhaps ten stairs down from them, evidently finding the pair much more interesting than whatever he'd been on his way to the owlery for. He was perhaps twelve, tall and gangly, with shoulder-length red hair, and when Severus caught sight of him and howled, "Get lost, Weasley!" the boy was remarkably quick to oblige.

For a fraction of a second, Calista dared to hope that her father had been sufficiently distracted - but no, he whirled right back around to face her, and continued precisely where he'd left off.

"And then I run through the castle like a maniac -  _like a bloody maniac, Calista_  - and I find you mucking about in a room full of  _wild bloody animals_ , about to get your face torn off - and  _then_  you disrespect me, and complain to me about fairness?"

Calista had thought that she'd seen her father angry before, but this was something else entirely. She couldn't help but cower, and even though by now she ought to have known better, she was waiting for pain.

Pain, as it turned out, was precisely what she did get, though not in the way she'd expected. He'd set her to copy lines, and when she'd asked him how many times she had to write it, he'd told her to let him know when she got to a thousand, and then he'd decide how many more there were. By the time she'd gotten that far, her right hand was aching, and she felt like she'd never want to hold a quill again.

The words ' _I will not terrify my father by running away and trying to get myself killed, for no better reason than that I was bored'_  were practically burned into her retinas.

Curiously, though, writing the words over and over had burned something else into her; she realised that her father had been so angry because he'd been scared - terrified, precisely - that she would wind up in danger, hurt, or even dead. She didn't have a lick of magic to defend herself with, yet, and for all he knew, she really meant it when she kept asking to go in the forest, or swim in the big black lake with the giant squid.

When she thought of it that way, the hard mass of resentment in her chest melted away, and she just felt hollow and ashamed. She gathered up the papers, and brought them to his study, where he'd elected to grade papers after his classes were done, so she'd have to pass by the doorway of the room he was in if she wanted to leave again.

She'd slipped into the room, fidgeting nervously in the doorway. He'd sighed heavily, looked up, with not a whole lot of patience in his face.

"What."

"I finished the writing," she said, "A thousand times."

He set his papers aside, held his hand out for the ones she was holding instead. "Let me see."

She stepped closer, handed him the sheaf, and stood in front of him, waiting for him to look at her again.

Severus looked over the papers; it did look as if she'd done it roughly a thousand times, but he wasn't going to count them to be sure. Instead, he looked at her, trying to read her face.

"And what do you think of leaving the flat without permission, now?"

"I… I still think it's not fair," she began, and he opened his mouth; she could see five hundred more lines about to come out of it. "But I don't think I was fair to you, either," she added hastily, "I didn't mean to make you worry. I was just bored. I didn't think you would get so scared."

"That you didn't think is painfully obvious," he said, and then, "So. Will you do it again?"

She shook her head, emphatically.

He looked at her another good long moment, gauging her sincerity.

"Fine," he said, finally, "You're finished with your punishment. But if you  _ever_  do something like that again-"

"I'll have to write it two thousand times?"

"At the very least."

"I won't," she said, "I feel really bad, now. I'm… I'm not used to someone worrying about me so much."

"Well, get used to it," he said, "And for Merlin's sake, try not to give me so many reasons to."

"I'll try," she said, but even then, both of them knew it was easier said than done.


	12. "I'm just saying, you never hear about anyone being attacked by a book, do you?"

Calista had once thought that if she could escape the life she had, if she could live with someone like Severus, that she would immediately be happy and her problems would fade away, but she found that reality wasn't nearly so neat and simple. There were still days when the memory of things her mother had done replayed vividly in her mind, and made her feel frightened and small; and then, almost without fail, her fear would transition into anger, because that was a much easier thing for her to feel.

She preferred the anger, by far: It was hard, and solid, and charged. It felt like something solid inside her, something tangible that she could name. Fear, on the other hand… it made her feel quivery and weak, like all her edges were blurred, or like her insides were trying to leap out of her skin. And besides, anger felt like a choice, while fear felt forced on her.

And even though she had promised to try not to make her father worry, had long ago told him that her plan wasn't to be mean to him, she was still disobedient and argumentative more than she knew she ought to be. It was like a compulsion, once she had gotten him teetering on the brink of anger, to push him there. And why, she could never explain, because she hated when he was angry; she liked it much better when they were getting along, when he was teaching her something, or answering her exhaustive questions, or even… well, she would never say so, couldn't even think it properly without feeling a rush of shame and embarrassment, but she liked it when he hugged her.

But that, the being affectionate - that was something that happened mostly after her nightmares, or sometimes during a very serious talk, and she thought that probably he was embarrassed by it just as much as she was - he must have thought, during those times, that she was a dreadful baby.

Once… just one time, she had started yelling in the middle of the night, for no reason at all, just so he would come and comfort her. But then, when he'd come running, and she could see alarm written all over his face, she'd felt horribly guilty, wished she'd never done it. He did try to hug her, too, that time, but by then she was beyond mortified by what she'd done, and pushed him away.

For a long time, it was a cycle of trying to wriggle her way close to him, emotionally speaking, and then relentlessly pushing back against him, distancing herself, and vexing him on purpose. Then she'd feel awful, and start the whole cycle over again, and she wished she knew  _why_  she kept on doing it, because when she thought about it, all she really wanted was to get close, and stay there.

For his part, Severus tried to have as much patience as he could, but she did make it very difficult sometimes. On some level, he understood some of what was happening, understood that, for reasons she probably couldn't even put into words, she felt like she had to test him, make certain that he wasn't going to abandon her, no matter what she put him through. He didn't understand why it had to go on so long, why she had to put them both through this cycle over and over, but he wasn't going to give up; partly, because he cared a great deal for her, even when she was a miserable brat, and partly,  _damn it_ , out of sheer stubbornness, because he didn't want her to  _win_. And, yes, he supposed that looking at their situation in a win/loss light was probably unhealthy, but there it was, just the same.

The other constant cycle they faced was the cycle of her nightmares; they would dwindle whenever he gave her potions, consistently, to help her sleep, but eventually, the dreams would start coming again, and he would have to give her higher dosages, and on and on, and he knew that she was developing a dependency on them, so he'd have to start the pattern in reverse, cutting her down to lower and lower amounts, and in between starting back up again, he gave it at least a month, so that her body would stop expecting the potion, and would be receptive to its effects once again.

Something curious happened, as well; he had always, since entering her mind, anyway, been able to feel her alarm when she was having a nightmare (well, nearly always - there had been one time when he'd felt nothing, but she'd started yelling for help, and he'd gone in and she said it was another nightmare) but, sometime when she was around nine or so, he'd started feeling something more.

He found that he would become aware, sometimes, of a sort of  _brushing_  against his outermost barrier, and whenever he went to find Calista after this, she had been wanting him, for something. To ask him a question, or to show him something in a book, or, sometimes, because she had remembered something that made her too afraid to want to be alone. He'd asked her about the brushing, but she didn't seem to have any idea what he was talking about.

And then, with the alarm. He found that sometimes, he could predict that he was about to feel it several moments before he actually did - it was like the buzzing of a bee outside a double-paned window; it would seep slowly into his consciousness, and then, once he had become aware of it, it was impossible to ignore. A few times, when he'd had this feeling, he'd managed to wake her up  _before_  she had a nightmare, or before it got particularly bad anyway, because she'd wake just slightly confused, and when he asked her if she'd been having a dream, she replied that she wasn't sure.

He thought, at first, that it must be another example of latent magical talent, that she must unconsciously be reaching out to him through legilimency, and perhaps that was partly it, but the longer it went on, the more he couldn't help but feel that there was some other factor at play. Perhaps it was the fact that they  _both_  had some talent for legilimency, but then, he'd been around legilimens that were quite more advanced than her, and never felt anything like this. Then he speculated that it could have something to do with their genetic bond, but why hadn't he felt it so keenly before this?

He'd tried using the phenomenon as further proof to show Calista that she was a witch; surely, even if she didn't realise it, she must have had some control, consciously or not, because it felt like her mind was reaching out towards him, and not the other way around, but she remained unconvinced until the day she cast her first spell.

When that happened, it had been such a small, inconsequential circumstance, and yet the moment had been monumental for her.

During one of their potions lessons, he had been supervising while she carefully followed the directions to make Boil-Cure Potion, a mixture that Severus often used as one of the first assignments for his first-years, as the nature of it allowed a very small chance for dangerous mistakes, a reason that suited it to be one of the first that Calista attempted by herself. While she had been measuring out porcupine quills, she had glanced at the cauldron of horned slugs nearby, and a flame erupted suddenly beneath it, sending the slimy solution into a gentle simmer. She had been so surprised that she dropped the quills, and they rolled across the surface of the worktop in all directions, some of them even falling to the floor.

Calista had stared at the cauldron in disbelief, and then looked at her father, as if for reassurance that she wasn't imagining what had just happened. Severus, who had been reasonably sure that something like this would happen soon, simply nodded at her. "Congratulations," he said, with a small smile, "Now, you should pick those quills up, and add them to the cauldron before it boils."

The potion had come out a little too thick and was more like a paste, but it still performed the function it was made for, and Calista had come away from that lesson with a boost to her self-esteem that was far greater than she would have received simply from getting the potion to come out right, anyway.

Almost as soon as Calista had inadvertently cast that first spell, there were dozens more. She found, to her utter delight, that she actually had a knack for wandlessly lighting fires, and she could light the candelabra in her room, too, without pressing the button at its base.

Without a doubt, however, Calista's favorite bit of magic to work involved the endless unidentifiable drawings she produced. One of the newfound talents she discovered was indeed an unusual, if somewhat useless, ability to manipulate the lines of her drawings after they had been produced, by willing them to look more like the way she had imagined them when she had set out to draw them. Suddenly, all of the indeterminable scribbles stuck on the walls of their flat became drawings. The vast majority of them were of cats. Severus would never tell Calista, but he preferred the scribbles.

As for  _the_  cat, Yellow, it had more than made itself at home. It seemed to have an innate ability to know exactly where Severus was intending to walk or sit, and could be counted on to be precisely in his way at all times. When the cat wasn't busy getting in Severus' way, it followed Calista around like a small, furry, and very annoying shadow, which pleased the little girl so immensely that sometimes it was the only circumstance that kept Severus from 'accidentally' letting the cat get lost outside the castle. He found himself anxiously awaiting the days when the cat would go off to live in Calista's House dormitory once she started at school, but then of course he'd have to let Calista go at the same time, so perhaps he wasn't  _too_  eager yet, after all.

He wondered, not for the first time, which House she would be sorted into; of course, he wanted her to be in his House, but he thought she might be a better fit for Ravenclaw, since as far as he could tell, she didn't really have any particular ambitions, except perhaps to annoy him. But then, she was fiercely competitive, and had a thirst for knowledge, and what ambitions had he really had at her age except to grow up to be powerful, and to have some friends of his own kind? He supposed it didn't really matter, as long as she wasn't in Gryffindor, mainly because he didn't think he could stand seven years of direct, rivalrous competition between his House and hers. Ah, and also because most of the Gryffindors he'd known growing up had been arrogant pricks - but he'd try not to hold that against her, if that's where she was Sorted.

**(¯ˆ·.¸¸.·ˆ¯)**

Severus woke in the middle of the night, for no reason at all. There was no sudden noise, no light streaming in from the hall, not even the psychic alarm from Calista that he was used to blaming for waking him from a dead sleep. He rolled over, closed his eyes, and tried to return to sleep.

And then, for just an instant, he  _did_  feel a sudden, fierce prick of alarm, and he threw the covers off - but then, it was gone, and he wasn't even certain that he had really felt it - perhaps he'd only expected to feel it, and had imagined for a few seconds that he did. Well, he was awake now, at any rate, so it couldn't hurt to check on Calista, just in case.

He pulled his robes on, went out into the hall. Odd. Her bedroom door was completely shut; she usually slept with it ajar. He turned the knob, pushed the door open.

She didn't have her nightlight on; perhaps it had burnt out. She'd had it more than a year, after all, and that was all it was guaranteed for. He lit his wand, squinted at her in the dim light.

She was sleeping, and her eyes were moving like mad beneath their lids; she was clearly dreaming, but he still didn't feel alarm emanating from her, and she didn't appear particularly restless. Perhaps she was actually having a good dream, for once.

He paused over her bed before he left. She had a hank of hair across her face, partly in her her mouth. He brushed it aside, lightly touching her forehead as he did so, and -

_-_   _cold, icy cold rage hurt and danger -_

A flash of something went through his mind, disappeared as soon as he had lifted his fingers from her skin. It wasn't… it wasn't alarm, though. It was… and he thought he must be going mad from losing so much sleep to all of her nightmares, because it felt like a  _threat_.

Experimentally, he touched her forehead again. For another fraction of an instant -

_\- fight and vengeance and snarling, crushing rage -_

And then her eyes snapped open, and she sat up, pushing his hand away from her. He expected her to say something, but she only turned her face away from him.

"Calista?" he ventured, reaching for her shoulder, "Is everything all right?"

She turned back to him, looked up - and then, something happened which had not happened in a very long time. A shuttered, blank look came across her eyes, like a wall.

"Are you… did you have the dream, again?" What else could it be?

"No," she said, and her voice came out hard and flat, a tone he hadn't heard from her since probably a month after she'd first spoken to him. "Leave me alone."

She was… well, she was guarded, against him, and she hadn't been that way, apparently hadn't felt the  _need_  to be that way in ages. He couldn't help but feel wounded; hadn't they got past this a long time ago?

And damn it, she had a nerve, treating him that way when he was just making sure she was okay, when so often in the middle of the night, she  _wasn't_.

"Fine," he said shortly, and left her room. But he couldn't sleep after that, couldn't get over the fact that she'd been so dismissive. He would have blamed it on leftover fear from a nightmare, but he didn't feel any sense of alarm from her, so it seemed to be something else.

The next morning, though, she seemed more or less back to normal. She was a little quieter than usual, perhaps, but she answered back at breakfast whenever he asked her anything, and there was nothing unusual in her eyes or her expression. He wanted to ask her about the night before, but couldn't quite bring himself to.

In the afternoon, when he went into his office between classes, she was in there, spread out on the floor drawing pictures on a loose sheet of parchment, and she even smiled at him when he came in. It was as if the previous night, her coldness, the barrier in front of her eyes, had never happened.

He sat down at his desk, reviewed his lesson plan for later that afternoon. He could hear the soft friction of her crayons on the parchment, and when that stopped, she scrambled to her feet and stepped over to his desk, handing him the picture. She hadn't bothered to enchant it, or perhaps she hadn't been able to - her magic still didn't always work when she wanted it to - because it was little more than a mass of green and black scribbles.

"Another cat?" he asked ruefully.

She shook her head. "It's a snake," she said, "I think."

"You think?"

She nodded. "It wasn't my idea."

Severus raised his brow at her. "Er… okay. Well, thank you, then."

He took the picture, set it aside on the far corner of his desk. "I'll hang it up later."

"You don't have to," she said, and shrugged. Then she turned around and left, and he heard, dimly, the door to their flat opening and closing.

She was acting a bit strange, but not abnormal enough to worry him; he went back to his lesson plan.

**(¯ˆ·.¸¸.·ˆ¯)**

She'd been just slightly quieter than normal all week, but she seemed mostly herself whenever he spoke to her, and she wasn't having any nightmares, even though they were in the month where he wasn't giving her any sleeping potions, so he wasn't particularly concerned, although he was still bothered by that one night - but maybe it had something to do with being off the potion, again, and he was trying not to focus on it too much.

Then, one day, he was reading in his study when she came in and took a sheet of parchment from the little writing desk. He looked up over the top of his book when she entered.

"What happened to your books, anyway? I haven't seen you writing in either of them in a long time. Did you finally manage to fill them both?"

"The sketchbook is full," she said, "The other one is… sometimes it's full, but sometimes it's all blank," she wrinkled her nose, as if the oddity of this had only just now occurred to her.

"You mean, it was blank, but now it's full?"

"No," and she looked at him as if he were daft, "I mean just what I said. It's full today."

Something tickled the back of his mind. And then, he remembered something, a flash of a memory from months and months ago.  _It's not full_ , she had said,  _There's always one page left_.

"Calista," he said, setting the book down on his lap, but keeping his page with his index finger. "Your book, the one you've had for a long time… May I see it?"

She shrugged, set down the piece of paper she'd grabbed, on top of a stack of books that sat on the surface of his writing desk. "I guess so."

She disappeared from the room, and returned a minute later, holding the little book that she'd had the very first time he met her. At the time, all of the pages had appeared to be blank, but she'd been writing in it an awful lot since then, so it was reasonable to expect that they wouldn't be anymore.

She held the book out to him, and he took his finger out of his own book so he could take it from her and examine it properly. It was thick, many of the pages crinkled and folded and torn; it definitely seemed as if she'd had it for a long time. As he expected, it was filled with pen-marks and pencil scrawls. Some of the pages held hastily scrawled words, but many of them were completely illegible. He flipped through them; it was as she'd said, every page was full. There were a few that even looked as if she'd written over them more than once. There was something about it, though… he felt, plainly, that there was some kind of magic in the book, though he didn't know right off what sort of magic it was.

She was watching him keenly, he noticed.

"It's certainly full," he remarked, turning it over in his hands, "Calista, where did you get this?"

She narrowed her eyes. "Wait… you… you can see things on the pages?" she asked, sounding very surprised.

"Is there a reason why I  _shouldn't_  be able to?" he asked, suddenly suspicious, even though the book didn't really feel dangerous.

"No one else can," she said, and she sounded almost as if she were accusing him of something, "Every time anyone's ever taken it away from me, they say it's all full of mouldy, blank paper."

"Who's taken it away from you?" he wondered. Were they all Muggles? Was that the magic in the book, to prevent the writing in it from being seen by Muggles?

"The people at the orphanage. And… and at the house I was at before that." She curled her lip. "And  _she_  took it away, loads of times."

Not Muggles, then. Something else.

"Where did you get it in the first place?" he asked again.

"I found it," she said, defensively. "It's mine."

He resisted the urge to roll his eyes. "I know it's yours. But where did you find it?"

"I… I forget, exactly," she said, and he searched her face. She seemed to be telling the truth. "It was in our house, somewhere. In  _her_  house."

"Did it have writing in it when you found it?"

"Of course not," she said scornfully, "How would  _I_  write in it then? Can I have it back now?"

"Not yet," he said, "I want to look it over first, make sure there isn't Dark magic in it."

" _What?_ But that's not fair! It's  _mine_!"

"Yes," he said slowly, drawing the word out, and exhaling through his teeth. "We've been over that. Nevertheless, I am going to inspect it for curses before you can have it back."

"This  _isn't fair_ ," she said again, loudly, as if it were the ultimate argument. The cat sidled into the room then, sat down by Calista's feet, and glared at him, as if he, too, thought it wasn't fair.

"Has that ever worked for you? Even once?" He had been annoyed, before; now that the damn  _cat_  was throwing its two cents in, he was far more than that.

"Well… no."

"Then please, stop saying it," he snarled. Then the cat stood up, arched its back, and he added spitefully, "Or, I swear, if I hear it  _one more time_ , I'm going to throw that bloody cat out the window."

"Go ahead," she said, fiercely, and Severus was shocked into a momentary silence. She wasn't, couldn't be, that callous, could she? Or perhaps she knew he was bluffing… but at this precise moment,  _he_  wasn't even sure he was bluffing...

"We live in a dungeon," she said, "It's not exactly a long drop."

_Damn it._  "I didn't mean  _our_ window," he said, but even to his own ears he sounded petulant. He flushed.

"The book is yours," he said hastily, and then he drew himself up, inhaled. "But  _you_  are mine, and I'm not giving you the book back until I'm certain it's safe."

There; that was properly authoritative, wasn't it?

An odd flash of an expression crossed her features; was she  _smiling_? But it was gone as quick as he had seen it, and she folded her arms defiantly. The cat gave him another reproachful glare, but settled itself back down at Calista's feet.

"Of course it's safe," she said, but he could tell her heart wasn't in the argument anymore, "It's a  _book_."

"What does that have to do with it being safe?"

"I'm just saying, you never hear about anyone being attacked by a book, do you?"

"Ah, actually, yes, I do. Attacked, spied upon, and possessed, as a matter of fact. And this  _particular_  book is alarming to me because you've had it nearly your whole life and never bothered to mention that it was full of magic - or did you not even know, which is even worse - and now you've stopped writing in it, and suddenly your nightmares have all but stopped?"

She blinked at him, several times in rapid succession.

"You don't… you don't really think the book has anything to do with it," she said, in a tone that was somewhere between a denial and a question.

"I don't know," he said, "Which is why I need to examine it. Can we ever - just once - play a fun little game where I tell you something and you just accept that what I say is the way it's going to be?"

"You could have told me you thought it had something to do with my bad dreams," she said.

"I did mention Dark magic."

She shifted, looked uncomfortably between his face and the book in his hands.

"You… you're not going to read it, are you?" Her features pinched together in concern.

"I wasn't going to," he said, locking eyes with her, "But should I?"

" _No_ ," she said, emphatically, and then she must have correctly interpreted his look, because she added, "And it's not because I did anything bad, it's just… I… sometimes I use it like a… you know, like a diary. It's… it's  _private_ ," she said, borrowing a word he had used, when she'd once wanted to look in the second drawer in his writing desk for more paper, the one that was usually locked.

He looked at her a moment longer; she held his gaze, so she was either being honest, or she had gotten much better at concealing when she was not.

"I may have to look through it to figure out precisely how it's been enchanted," he said, "But I will try to read as little of it as possible."

"When can I have it back?" she asked moodily, even though it was true when he'd said that he hadn't seen her writing in it in quite a long time.

He sighed. "I'll give it back to you after I figure out the enchantment," he said, "As long as it isn't dangerous."

She wavered a moment, then finally left, picking up the loose parchment from on top of his writing desk on her way. The cat leapt up, followed at her heels.

_Top of the Astronomy Tower_ , he thought sourly in the cat's direction,  _How's that for a window?_

**(¯ˆ·.¸¸.·ˆ¯)**

Logically, if the journal Calista kept had been found in the Lestrange home, it should have belonged to them, or perhaps it could have been something that Bellatrix had brought with her when she'd married Rodolphus, but if that were so, it evidently hadn't been very important to either of them, because it held no markings that would indicate it belonged to an old wizarding family.

He'd been to Bellatrix's childhood home at Grimmauld Place, to visit Narcissa before she'd married Lucius Malfoy, and everything they owned seemed to be stamped or embossed with the Black Family Crest. He had no reason to believe that the Lestranges wouldn't have done the same; and besides, the book felt old, but not  _old_. He suspected, upon examination, that it had belonged to someone else before Calista, but it simply did not feel like something that had been around for more than a generation or two.

There was a certain feel to old magic, a powerful antiquity, and this book did not have any of that, although there was  _something_  about it...there had to be, or why else would the pages have appeared like nothing more than - what had she said -  _mouldy, blank paper_  - to everyone but Calista, and now, him?

He flipped through it again; still, pages and pages of her words and markings flew by; he stopped when he saw, at a flash of a glance, a scrawled word that looked an awful lot like 'father'. He flipped back through, found the page again. He had promised her that he wouldn't read anything he didn't need to to decipher the enchantment… but then,  _he_  was the only one besides Calista who could read the words, so perhaps there was some clue in whatever she had written about him that explained that. He told himself that he would stop reading if he came across anything that would potentially embarrass her.

This page was one of the ones that was not too difficult to decipher; would have been plainly legible, if she didn't have such atrocious handwriting. It had gotten a little bit better lately (probably from the practise of copying lines so many times as a punishment), and this page was clearer than her writing had been on the potions list she'd given him, so this must have been more recent than that.

_I can't believe my father let me get a cat even though he hates cats I know he does because you don't call things you like sodding little hairballs well I bet he would call me that if I was being really bad but he would not really mean it and I think he does mean it about yellow but it must mean that he likes me a lot I like him too. The things I don't like are stupid rules and vegetables and writing the same things over and over but I guess it is okay because mostly I like everything here but my father I like the most I would live outside if we had to -_

Severus tore his eyes from the page. This, clearly, was not where the secret to the book's magic was hidden, and although seeing her say in writing that she liked him, not once but twice, warmed him a bit more than he was comfortable admitting, he  _had_  promised not to read more than he had to.

He flipped through the pages again. He caught phrases, here and there -

_I like cats they are nice_

_it looked like a marshmallow bean but it tasted like socks_

_make a potion today_

but none of it appeared at all useful. He started turning the pages more slowly, scanning them quickly for anything that sounded important, forcing himself to skip everything that wasn't, even when it mentioned him. Although, that did spare him from reading Merlin knew how many pages about bean flavours and cats, so there was that silver lining, he thought.

The second run through, a few passages did jump out at him, because they mentioned her dreams, or Bellatrix.

_sometimes I am scared that she will get out of the prison and come hurt me again but my father said he will protect me but I hope he knows that she is very good at magic even though she is a bad person I wish it could be only good people can be good at magic and bad people would be bad at it_

_I hate the dream and even when it goes away my back is still feeling like cuts and it hurts sometimes and I keep thinking it is bleeding everywhere again and sometimes I can even see the blood on my blankets and what if I die from having no blood but then there isn't blood but then there is and it takes a long time for there to not be any and it is so cold just like before I think blood must make you warm and when it goes away you turn cold I hate cold except snow I like snow_

_wish I just had no mother and then I would not have bad dreams but maybe now I have no mother because I do not see her anymore and that is good_

There was one entry too, that had clearly been written before any of the others, had almost certainly been written while she was being held at the Order headquarters:

_thay no mum is bad thay sed it and thay sed i wil shoo her war thay liv but i wont_

The entries she'd written about Bellatrix, and about her nightmares, were chilling, perhaps even more so for the fact that they  _were_  scattered amongst passages written about cats and candy, but, so far as he could tell, nothing written in the book had anything to do with whatever enchantment was on it. How, then, could he read it when no one else could?

It couldn't be because of their genetic bond, because Bellatrix couldn't read it, and besides, even he hadn't always been able to read it; he distinctly remembered seeing blank pages, long ago, just as everyone else had.

Well, perhaps that was it, then - what had changed, from when he'd first met her until now? An awful lot, actually, but there had to be something concrete, didn't there? He had used legilimency on her - perhaps the book was attuned to her mind specifically, and now that he had touched her mind he could read it too?

If only he could remember if he had ever actually  _seen_  writing in it before, and when, perhaps he could narrow it down for certain. He had seen her writing  _in_  it, and he'd assumed that she'd been filling pages, but had he ever actually seen writing on them for himself, before she'd handed the book to him the other day?

Something caught in his brain, and he replayed his last few thoughts.  _she'd handed the book to him_  and then he remembered precisely what she'd said:  _Everyone who's ever taken it away from me says it's full of mouldy, blank pages._

No - it couldn't really be that simple, could it? Well, there was only one way to find out.

The next day, he gave her the journal back.

"Did you read it?" she asked, anxiously, before adding, nearly as an afterthought, "Were there any curses on it?"

"I glanced through it for clues as to the magic embedded in it, as I said I would," he said, "I didn't read the majority of it, nor did I find any curses on it."

Of course, if his experiment failed, he would take the book back and continue to check it, but she didn't need to know that.

He watched surreptitiously to see where she put it away - she kept it, evidently, in the top drawer of her wardrobe, which was precisely where he would have looked for it, anyway. He'd rather expected something a bit more clever, but perhaps she'd never thought about hiding it, since no one before him had ever been able to read it, anyway.

Later, when they were both in his office - he pretending to correct essays while she read a book - he waited until she seemed absorbed, and then slipped out of his office and into their flat. He went into her bedroom - he had actually never been in it while she  _wasn't_  since she'd come to stay with him - and opened the top drawer of her wardrobe. Sitting right on top of a pile of clean, but unfolded, laundry was the tatty little book. He picked it up, flipped through the pages -

And they were blank. Every single page in the book was - well, mouldy and blank. Bloody hell. He closed her drawer, and brought the book with him back to his office for one final test.

"Calista," he said, entering the office, "I need you to do something."

She looked up, indignation plain on her face, and leapt up from the chair she'd been sitting in, the book she was reading falling facedown onto the ground. He winced, until he saw it was only one of her cat books. "Hey! That's my book!"

"I assure you, I am still as aware of that fact as I ever was." He held the book out to her. "I need you to hand the book to me."

"Er… why?"

"I think I've figured out the spell on it; just hand it to me, would you?"

"You still won't read it, right?"

"No," he said exasperated, "But will you hand the damn thing over?"

She scowled, but held it out. He took it from her, opened the cover -

It was filled with pages and pages of scribbles and hastily scrawled words. He flipped through it, quickly, to verify that it was exactly the same as before, and then he handed it right back to her, and chuckled.

"It's so  _simple_ ," he said, "You just need to hand it to someone, and they can read it. But no one ever asked you for it before, did they?"

"No," she said reflecting, "They just took it."

"Well," he said, "At least I know for certain it isn't cursed, now."

"Didn't you… know that already, when you gave it back?"

"I was reasonably certain," he said, "But I had to try taking it from you to make absolutely sure, didn't I?"

"I guess." She picked up her other book off the floor, set it on her chair. "So if I put my book away now, you can't read it, right?"

"That would be correct."

She nodded, satisfied. "Good."

She brushed past him, book in hand. He reached out to open the door for her at the same that she reached for the knob herself. Their hands touched -

_\- seething, twisting, coiling rage, hurt you -_

He started, pulled his hand back.

"Calista!" he yelled, because he didn't know what else to say.

She started, now, looked up at him, a question in her eyes.

He peered at her, but she looked - normal. Well, a bit shaken perhaps, but there was nothing in her that matched what he had just felt, nothing in her eyes besides surprise and uncertainty.

"What was that for?" she asked, understandably startled.

"I -" he reached for her again, touched the side of her face with his hand.

He felt the warm skin of her cheek, and nothing else.

_What in the fuck_ was _that?_

"Nothing," he said, "Nevermind."

"Ooookay," she said, and she backed out of his office, looking at him as if he had gone completely mental.

He hadn't, had he?


	13. "Mama sees everything."

' _Calista'_

_She is sitting in one of the armchairs in her father's study, a dark-covered volume cradled carefully in her arms. It's her father's book, one of the ones that she has permission to read by herself, but it's very advanced for her and she's having trouble understanding a lot of the words._ Secrets Kept: The Lost Art of Occlumency _, the book is called._

' _Calista'_

_She hears her name, called as if from a long way off. She tries to ignore it, because she's concentrating on the book. It seems very important to keep reading it, although she isn't sure why. She hunches over it, letting her black hair fall forward, a curtain to shut out the rest of the world. Inside, it's just her eyes and the lines and lines of text on the page._

' _Calista'_

_She starts, lifts her head. Suddenly, the voice calling her is much closer. She turns her head towards the doorway of the study, and as soon as she does, her eyes go wide with horror. She doesn't see the hall beyond, the ancient stone of the castle dungeons, or the light from the kitchen across. Instead, she sees a wide, arched doorway, the dark, low form of a sofa with elaborately carved arms and feet. How can that be? She is here, in her father's study, at Hogwarts castle._

_Except that, when she looks down, she finds that she is wrong, after all. She is not sitting in an armchair in a small study at all, and the book in her hands is only her little journal, the one she's always had. She sits on a hard wooden bench, part of a hand-carved dining set made of dark wood that matches the arms of the sofa in the other room. Above her, a chandelier casts a flickering half-light on the scroll-patterned wallpaper._

' _Calista'_

_The voice is very close, now, and there's an undulating singsong quality to it that is probably meant to be cajoling, but instead sounds eerie and foreboding. She feels her heart speed up, and her head clouds with an overwhelming sense of déjà vu. Something very bad is going to happen, something she already knows all about, except that, at the moment, she can't recall precisely what it is._

_A shadow, a breath, and then she is no longer alone. The voice, and the person it belongs to, materialise in the doorway, blocking the sofa from view. Mother. A cold shiver runs down her spine, as she meets her mother's eyes. Instinctively, she empties her mind, imagines a curtain being drawn over her eyes, but her mother, Bellatrix, has no interest in reading her thoughts, today._

_Her mother steps into the dining room, takes her by the arm. Her book falls to the floor; she can see it settle underneath the heavy table, just before she is yanked out into the sitting room. Her mother tosses her unceremoniously onto the sofa, draws something from her pocket. She is expecting to see her mother's wand, is already bracing herself for pain, but instead, something silver and shining comes out in her mother's hand. It is a blade, cruel and sharp._

_She remembers, now, what is going to happen, and she scrambles up from the sofa, tries to run past Bellatrix out of the room, even though she knows she won't make it. Her mother does draw her wand now, in her other hand, and even though she doesn't say a word, Calista is stopped in her tracks, unable to move. She has fallen to the floor, but her mother picks her up, with the hand that still clutches the knife. Her mother's fingers are twisted in her hair; it feels like its being pulled right out of her head, but Calista can't run away, or make a sound, now._

_Her mother thrusts her at the sofa again, slips her wand into her pocket, and fingers the blade of the knife lightly. 'Good little girls stay close to their mothers,' her mother says, her eyes glinting madly, 'But you are not a good little girl, are you? You think I do not see the way you hide all the time? You think, perhaps, that I cannot see the itch to run away, every time I bring you outside?' She licks her lips, presses the tip of the knife into her own finger, and a bead of blood wells up on her fingertip, then drips, heavily, down the blade._

' _Mama sees_ everything _,'_   _Bellatrix hisses, 'And just in case you forget who you belong to, in case you do try to run away from me...' She smiles coldly. 'Let's make sure you don't get very far before I find you.' She leans forward, grabs Calista roughly around the neck, and turns her over, pressing her face into the back of the sofa. Calista still can't move, can't scream, but if she could, no one would hear it now. She can't see anymore, either; the rough brocade is black and it's all she can see. She feels her mother's hand twist into her hair again, at the nape of her neck this time, and then she feels something cold and hard run down her spine; it doesn't hurt, but it makes her eyes fill with tears, anyway._

_The fabric of her robes falls around her, split from the neckline to the waist. She shivers, and she feels her mother twist her hair tighter, and she thinks it hurts, until the point of the knife sears at her skin without warning, and it hurts so much that she forgets about everything else; how can it be so cold, so hot, at the same time? She is blinded and she can't scream; she summons all of her willpower, tells herself she will break the spell holding her, will run away. She keeps telling herself the same thing, repeats it in her mind, over and over - I will run away now, I will run away now - but she is not able, now or ever, to get away from her mother._

_Time flows by, thick and sluggish; pain is her constant. She is cold, so cold, and her whole body shivers convulsively; tears and snot and drool mix into a sticky mess on her face, and finally, she is pulled backwards by the hand in her hair. - I will run away now - and she finds that, at last, she can move again. She stumbles to her feet, struggles against the fingers that hold her fast; she doesn't care about her hair, she'll let it get torn out, just to get away. The room slides into a dim focus; she has seen nothing but black for so long that it takes her a minute to see. The first thing she sees is her mother's white hand, coated with a slick red layer of blood, holding the knife. It is not silver anymore, but dark and shiny._

_A powerful, coppery scent finds its way past the mess of fluids on her face, and she feels her stomach tighten threateningly just as she feels her foot slip on the hard floor. She looks down, sees that she has slipped in a puddle of dark red sticky stuff, and she opens her mouth. This, she knows, is the part where she screams; the part where, once, her mother had slapped her, and then cast a Silencing Charm on her. But not anymore. Now, she knows, if she screams, someone will come._

_She remembers this now, too, remembers that the sitting room will melt gradually into rough stone walls, the sofa into a soft bed with white sheets instead of black brocade. And her father will come, and he will tell her that it is over, that her mother is gone, and for a long time she will still smell the coppery blood and feel the chill in her bones and the burning pain of the cuts on her back, and she won't believe him at first, not until his arms come around her, and warm her, and hold her still, but a different kind of still that feels safe and calming, instead of cruel and binding._

_She waits for this to happen, but something isn't right, something isn't happening the way it's supposed to. Her mouth is open, but she can't push a scream out. The sitting room doesn't melt away at all, and neither does her mother. Instead, her mother drops the knife on the floor, where it clatters heavily against the wood. She puts her hands, cold, on Calista's face, presses the tips of their noses together, and stares, hard grey eyes, into her own._

' _Remember when you said it felt real?' Bellatrix coos, her breath warm in Calista's face, 'It is, dear one. It is real'._

_And then, somehow, her mother climbs right inside Calista's eyes, and even though she gets no smaller and Calista gets no bigger, she feels energetic heat under her skin, feels something dark and sinister opening her insides up, finding hollows and crannies to slide into, a fierce, fluid shadow. The scars on her back - or are they fresh wounds, now? - burn like fire, and she struggles to scream, struggles more for this, now, than she ever has for anything in her entire life, because at last, she knows that there is someone who will come, if only she can make him hear her._

_She hears her own voice, shrill, echo against the walls of the sitting room, for only as long as a single breath; and then, her hand, her mother's hand, settles coldly over her mouth._ I don't think that's necessary _, she hears, echoing from somewhere inside of her, inside one of the shadowy hollows. Her body steps forward, even though she doesn't want it to. Her hand reaches out, takes hold of the edge of the heavy curtains that hang behind the sofa, pulls it. The curtain grows, surrounds her, and now she doesn't know whether she is still in the sitting room, or in her new bedroom with its stone walls and it's little blue nightlight (no, that's gone now) or if she is even anywhere at all._

**(¯ˆ·.¸¸.·ˆ¯)**

Severus glanced up at the clock in his office; it was past midnight now, and he still had one more essay to mark for his morning class tomorrow. He was behind, because he'd taken some time to examine Calista's little book. He knew now what the enchantment was, knew that it was harmless, and he had never felt anything at all like Dark magic in the book, and even though he had already given it back to Calista, something about it was still niggling at his mind.

Was it something he had glimpsed, scrawled across its pages? Or was it something in the way it had felt?

He crossed a line off in the second paragraph of the essay he was marking, wrote a correction in the margin.

Perhaps it wasn't the book at all; perhaps all he was bothered by was the cold, alien flash of  _something_ he had felt when he had touched Calista's hand. It was precisely the same as what he had felt the night that he had thought she was crying out for him, when he'd brushed the hair out of her face. And then, when she'd woken up, her eyes had gone quickly, carefully blank.

_Blank._

He knew, suddenly, what was bothering him about the book. It was something Calista had said, before handing it to him.  _Sometimes it's full, but sometimes it's all blank._  But the book belonged to her, was charmed to reveal its contents only to her, or to someone whom she willingly handed it over to - so how could it appear blank, to her, ever?

His quill hovered over the essay. He wondered if he should ask her for the book again, tomorrow, to look it over one more time, see if there  _was_  another enchantment that he had missed. She wouldn't like it, though, might not even hand it to him a third time. Perhaps if he -

He felt a burst of wild, uncontrolled terror erupt in his mind, and it was like the piercing sense of alarm he felt during Calista's nightmares, only it was a hundred times stronger, a hundred times more desperate. He leapt from his chair, dropping his quill on the floor along the way, tore into his quarters and down the hall to his daughter's room -

And before he had even made it there, it had stopped, abruptly. As he pushed her bedroom door wide open, he was aware, already, that she was silent, even in his mind. It was as if he had never felt it, but he  _knew_  he had. He used his wand to light the candelabra in her room, realising that he had not yet replaced her nightlight. She was sleeping, quietly. Her breathing was even, undisturbed. But when he leaned over her, looked at her face, he could see, as before, her eyes darting rapidly back and forth beneath their lids.

"Calista," he said, reaching for her shoulder. He could still feel his own heart racing, so intense had the panicked burst in his mind been. He shook her shoulder with one hand, put his other gently to the side of her face. "Calista!"

Her eyes snapped open, and her hands went lightning quick to his, clawed at them tried to pull them both off of her.

_\- cold rage and freedom and lashing out and -_

He ignored the clawing hands, put both of his hands on her shoulders firmly, pulled her up to a sitting position, locked his gaze on her face. Her eyes were hard, flinty, shuttered, cold, and her face was set blank and stony.

" _What_  is the meaning of this? What's going on, Calista?"

Her eyes narrowed into a glare, but remained impassive and distant. She didn't say a word. He had expected fear, when he came rushing into her room, had expected some outward sign of the terror that had exploded into his mind, but there wasn't a trace of it on her face, wasn't a trace of any emotion at all.

He had not seen her face so perfectly blank in all the time he had known her; at the beginning, she had tried, but never had she looked so - empty.

"Calista," he said, his voice low and urgent, "You don't need to hide. Tell me what's wrong.  _You're safe._ "

And then, there was a tiny something, a spark of light in the depths of her dark eyes, and he felt, very faintly, as if from a great distance, a thread of alarm pulsing, pushing its way into his mind - then, her hands were clawing at him again, viciously, and this wasn't the blind flailing she'd done before while in the throes of a nightmare, but a purposeful attack; he had to drop his hands from her shoulders and back away to keep from losing an eye, and still, he felt a sting across his cheek where her fingernails had scratched him good.

She was still flailing like mad, even though he was no longer in reach; her eyes were wide, dark wells, and whatever he had seen in their depths was gone now. He drew his wand from his pocket again, cast a spell that would immobilize her for a few minutes; he didn't want to, but she was not acting at all  _sane_ , let alone like herself.

He had promised her that he would not use legilimency on her as long as she spoke to him, but she was not speaking now - and anyway, he had no intention of using it to peruse her thoughts, only to calm her, since he couldn't do it any other way. He put his hands at the side of her face as he had done before, looked directly into her eyes.

He brushed against the blankness behind her eyes, expected it to fall away as it had done before, and was astonished when it did not. He pushed more forcefully, and still, the barrier around the outer edge of her mind held strong and solid. How was this possible, that she had suddenly and without warning developed infinitely more advanced occlumens abilities? It  _wasn't_ , because as Severus felt his way along the barrier, studying its nature, it felt, not only impossibly strong, but also partly  _wrong_.

It felt like a barrier of Calista's, and yet, at the same time, it didn't. It felt something like the barrier that he had once created in her mind, to allow her to sleep peacefully without her darkest memories crowding her mind - it felt as if it had been erected in her mind by someone else entirely, but it felt as if they had taken strands and wisps of Calista's mind and melted it into the barrier, somehow.

And then, the binding spell he'd cast on her broke, and she was flailing again, and he let go of her face to grab her wrists, held them fast. She closed her eyes.

Severus had had enough;  _something_  dreadfully wrong was happening in his daughter's mind. Something had happened which had somehow triggered - and this was the only explanation he could come up with, in that moment - her magical potential to well up in full force, fuller force than he'd known she even possessed. Had something attacked her, somehow? But no one had entered their flat, he was sure of it, and anyway,  _nothing_  had ever caused this iron-solid barrier to go up in her mind before. He didn't think, even though he had felt it himself, that such a barrier could even  _exist_  in the mind of a child at all.

He pulled her to him by her wrists, led her out of the room and down the hall, through the door of their flat and into his office. She didn't struggle anymore, nor did she open her eyes, not even when he sat her down in the chair behind his desk, the one where he had so recently been correcting an essay about shrinking potions.

He tapped his wand to the lock on the top drawer of his desk, and it slid open. He reached inside, took out a tiny vial of clear liquid. Whatever the barrier was, he was not going to be able to get through it quickly or with ease, and he needed to know  _now_  what was happening to his daughter, needed to know if she was in some sort of immediate danger - and needed to know what the  _hell_  it was that he kept feeling, in cold and threatening flashes, when he touched her skin.

He unstoppered the vial. "Open your mouth," he said, but it was as if she hadn't heard him, or was choosing not to. She sat in the chair, with her eyes still closed, and her face set blankly. He set the stopper down on the surface of his desk, and held the vial in one hand while he took her chin and opened her mouth with his other hand. Too late, she realised what was happening, and forced her jaw shut, but he had already gotten a few drops of the potion onto her tongue.

He waited, watching as it took effect. The Veritaserum was a gamble; he knew that his barely-ten-year-old daughter could not possibly hope to resist its effects, but then, he also knew that it should have been equally impossible for the strong, ironlike barrier to exist in her mind. He had to hope that whatever had given her the ability to erect it did not give her the ability to suddenly resist the truth serum, too.

Her eyes opened, and he could see the fog of the serum in them; even though her face was still blank, it was a different sort of blank - like a daze instead of a wall.

"What is your name?" he asked, quietly, to set a benchmark.

She opened her mouth, and he could see confusion in her eyes; another thing that should have been impossible. She should have answered, straight away, or, if the potion had not worked, should have kept the same look in her eyes that she'd had moments before.

"... C… Calista?" It came out as a question - but that meant that she somehow didn't  _know_  her own name? Unless, he thought, in a sudden panic, unless something had gone wrong with the potion; he had made it himself, was positive it had come out correctly, but plainly it must not have - but it  _had_ , he knew it had.

"What is your surname?" he tried again.

"Le… Lest… Snape?" Another question, and she'd wavered, almost called herself by her mother's surname - how was this, any of this, possible?

"Where are you right now?" he asked, and this time she  _did_  answer straight away, without any hesitation or uplifted note at the end of her sentence.

"In the Potions Master's office, in the dungeon of Hogwarts Castle," she said.

"Are you in danger, Calista?" he asked softly.

He felt his heart skip when she answered. "Yes."

"What is the danger?"

"The danger is my moth-" she stopped abruptly, and he saw, again, confusion slide across her features.

"Your mother? How are you in danger from your mother?" This didn't make any sense at all - he would have  _heard_  if Bellatrix had been released or had excaped from Azkaban, wouldn't he?

"I…" She trailed off, and he could see a struggle in her eyes to find the answer.

"Calista?" he prompted again, and then she sputtered out a reply.

"She's not letting me talk," she said, which didn't seem at all like an answer to the question he had asked. But still, somehow addressing her by name had seemed to help her answer, so he tried it again.

"Calista, how are you in danger from your mother?"

"She cut me," she said, and it was strange to hear this years-old horror brought up in the flat monotone that went along with Veritaserum, "It was real."

"What was real, Calista?"

"Everything," she said, and he could see the potion wearing off already, see some of the stoniness returning to her dark eyes - but how could it wear off that quickly, unless she  _was_  somehow resistant to it?

"How can I help you?" he wondered aloud, and he hadn't truly been speaking to her, but she answered anyway.

"If I give you the book, we can write in it. She… she can't read the…"

"Go on, Calista," he said, and the use of her name helped her finish speaking.

"If it's me, I can read it. If it's her, the pages will look blank."

"What do you mean, 'if it's her'?"

But the hardness had come fully into her eyes again, and she wouldn't say anything more, no matter how he asked. She sat there, in his chair, looking straight through him, her face as impassive as if she were only a statue of his daughter, instead of flesh and blood.

He swept out of the office, locking the door behind him magically, so she couldn't leave it, just in case. He went back into her room, found the journal in the top drawer of her wardrobe. It was blank, but he only had to get her to hand it to him to fix that. He brought the journal back into his office, set it on his desk.

"Calista, will you hand me your book?" he asked, but she ignored him.

He stepped closer to her, leaned forward to look into her eyes, again, put one hand on her shoulder.

"Please," he said, "Calista, give me the book."

There it was again; the spark in the back of her eyes, like a light on the other side of a wide, fog-shrouded lake.

"Need… need a quill," she said, and it came out breathy and gaspy, as if she  _had_ been asking from underwater.

He snatched up the one off the floor that he had been marking essays with, pressed it into her hand. She took the book, opened it at random, and pressed the tip of the quill into it, scrawling quickly and purposefully. He could see her hand shaking, and he thought that her skin was somehow even paler than it usually was.

She picked up the book, still holding the quill in her other hand, and he could see her waver; she held the book up, but didn't quite hand it to him - even from here, he could see that it was still blank.

"Calista, please," he said again, lifting her chin lightly with one hand, boring into her eyes with his; the light was getting smaller, further away…

She thrust the book out at him, and he took it with his free hand, just as she dropped the quill and shoved his hand off her face. The light was gone, leaving only a blank expanse of blackness in her eyes.

But he had the book. He looked down, could see a single line of writing on the page that it was open to.

_she cut me and she climbed in my eyes and_

And that was all it said.

And yet, it was all that it needed to say; something dawned on him with an urgent, menacing horror. The barrier, the iron-strong barrier in her mind… it didn't feel like it belonged in her mind because it  _didn't_ , not entirely -

He took hold of her face again, ignored the searing cold fury that touched him as he did so, gazed into her eyes; this time, he lifted his wand in his other hand.

" _Legilimens,"_  he intoned, and he went up against the barrier in her mind again, sent psychic tendrils feeling along it; and now that he knew what he was looking for, he found that, even though most of it did not feel like Calista, it did feel familiar, after all.

The hard, strong wall, the chill of icy rage that enshrouded it, pushed itself through the pores of his daughter's skin even now - they belonged, without a doubt, to Bellatrix Lestrange.


	14. "Please don't let her steal the rest of me."

Now that he had identified the other psychic presence that was woven into the construction of the barrier in the forefront of his daughter's mind, Severus gathered his strength, coiled it into a tight spiral. He had seen Bellatrix's barriers before; they were strong, he recalled, but they were not nuanced, not complicated. She had a great deal of strength, when it came to Occlumency, but not a whole lot of finesse. Thus, he expected that he would not need to solve any complicated puzzles, pick any mental locks. It would be purely a battle of wills, of strength of mind, to pierce through her barrier.

She was a very strong witch, but she had never struck him as particularly clever, and she was arrogant to a fault. She would believe, if she had not changed since he had last known her, that pure magical strength was all she needed to protect herself. And this barrier was built so strongly that he knew it must encompass the bulk of her strength; if he got beyond it, there would be little to no challenge awaiting beyond it.

_How_ she had managed to assert her presence here, in their daughter's mind, he did not know; but he would find out, he thought grimly, as he pulled more and more of his strength into the spiral of thought he was creating. as soon as he broke through her barrier.

When he judged he had amassed enough of his own will together into the tight mental spiral, he aimed it forcefully at the exterior of the great wall, twisting it through like a drill bit; it wasn't subtle or artful, but he knew it would be strong enough, and his primary concern was breaking through it, to find out what had become of his daughter. She was still there, somewhere beyond this barrier. He had seen the spark of her, faintly.

With great strength of will, he pushed through the barrier; he made it through, but it had been more difficult even than he had expected; had protecting herself from dementors in Azkaban given her more strength? But it didn't matter; he was through.

Beyond the barrier, the landscape had changed drastically since he was last in his daughter's mind. Where before, streams of colour had swirled around the outer edges of her consciousness, turning into echoey voices as he drew near them, there was only a thick, dark fog; it was so dense that it felt nearly another solid thing, almost a barrier itself. Alarmingly, none of it felt at all like Calista. It was as if, by breaking through the barrier, he had entered  _Bellatrix_ , but that couldn't be possible… he had gotten here by looking into his child's eyes.

He pushed through the fog, feeling already that he had fatigued himself pressing through the barrier; it had taken more strength than it ought to have. As he crossed the dark, cloudlike expanse beyond the barrier, he sensed a great ocean open up beneath him; he floated above its surface like a ghost, but he could feel rushing waves churning and sucking, could feel an eagerness to pull him down, down, into a pool of something dark, foreboding. When he looked down, he could see that he was not floating at all, but gliding along an impossibly fragile surface… it shone, like the silk threads of a spiderweb in bright moonlight… but there, the resemblance to a spider's web ended, for this wasn't silver and gossamer; this was a net, a fine, delicate net made of impossibly thin strands of thought. The strands were of all colours; red and orange, green and yellow, blue and violet.

He crouched, or his spirit-self did, and brushed his finger along one of the junctions, where a green thread and a blue one twisted together. And here, at last, was something that felt familiar, that felt as if it belonged. There was a vibration that could have been music, so welcome was it; it felt warm, it felt  _known_  to him. Words wafted up, slow and wispy, from the threads he had plucked.  _It wouldn't matter to me if you were a witch, or a Squib, or a Hippogriff_ , his own voice came, smooth and sincere, and then hers, light:  _If I was a hippogriff, I wouldn't fit inside._

' _Calista,'_  he murmured, looking down at the webby surface; it was the only thing he had seen here that looked or felt remotely like her. He felt the fog press around him, claustrophobic and suddenly a lot more solid; he should have been able to push it away, but he had used more of his strength than he'd expected to getting in. He put his hand flat against the surface of the net; it felt warm, even as the fog rolling in around him was cold and clammy. He sent a thread of himself down through his hand, out into the net.  _'Show me where you are_ ', he said, into it.

He felt, then, something hook gently around his wrist, pull him forward. He was hit by a sudden, powerful flash of memory:  _a sidewalk, a low building behind him and a quiet street ahead. A tiny, dark-haired child at his side. 'I don't suppose you've ever been Apparated before', and then small fingers firmly around his wrist._  He rose again, stepped carefully across the net - the fog pressed but it didn't quite suffocate. He walked, and even though he couldn't see Calista, he could feel her, leading him along. Gradually, the fog thinned, cleared, and he left it behind him. The tugging on his wrist stopped, and he looked around at where he was now.

_Impossible_ , was his first thought, because he was standing in front of a great, strong wall again, an expanse of solid blankness. How had he gotten back outside of her mind again? He pressed his palms against the wall - ah, but it wasn't the same. This one glimmered, faintly, with a sense of the familiar. His eyes roved over it, and he could see, like fine netting, over the surface of the hulking grey wall, a delicate diamond-shaped lace woven into the surface of the barrier. It glimmered, green and blue and yellow, all the colors that the main wall lacked; it felt like his daughter, here and there, in tiny, thready pulses along its surface. But the bulk of it, the solidness of it: they were still Bellatrix.

But  _how_? How could se have built another wall, as strong as the first? He  _knew_  she wasn't that strong, couldn't possibly have constructed these defences even in her own mind, let alone in the mind of someone who was hundreds of miles away in the physical world.

And then, there was a ripple in the wall, and a tiny, ghostlike form spilled out of it. It was his daughter, at last, her psychic representation of her self; but she was pale and transparent, threatened to flicker away even as she stood in front of him, feet planted on the same tenuous net that supported him. Below them, a dark sea still raged; he felt splashes of it come up through the gaps in the web, freezing and burning his ankles at the same time.

' _Calista'_ , he said to her,  _'What is happening?'_  He reached for her shoulders, wanted to look into the eyes of her avatar, if for no other reason than to reassure himself that she was still there, but his hands went right through her, and he felt dread coil up in the pit of his stomach. This vision of her represented the core of her self, her identity… and it was faded nearly to nothing, insubstantial. If it faded away entirely, she might very well be gone for good; it was what the dementors took, when they Kissed their victims, and she seemed, somehow, to be losing it without their help.

She pointed down, at the webby net beneath them, and the raging sea not far below.  _'That's madness,'_  she said, and even her voice was little more than a whisper.  _'I… don't want to go down… so I do this...'_  and she crouched down, put her hand on the net, as he had done, and  _pushed_ at the surface. A shiny braid of thoughts shimmered against the skin of her forearm, pulled itself out of her, and twisted into the fabric of the net below them. It bound, tightly, at a junction of other coloured strands, shone bright and strong for a moment. But as he watched, a spray of cold sea lashed up from below, bit at the thread she had just laid; and it began, slowly, to disintegrate. She put her hand down in another spot, and another thread came from somewhere beneath her skin; this one was green, and it wound itself rapidly along a junction that was close to failing; but when he looked, there were fraying, thinning spots all over the net, and the sea was lashing up furiously - it was only a matter of time before the threads were eaten away. And worse, as she expelled these threads to reinforce the net beneath them, he could see her fading, becoming more and more transparent; for an instant, she shimmered away, and he thought that he was already too late…

She became visible again, but only just. She floated back, towards the wall she had materialised from, and he thought she was going to disappear behind it again.

' _Wait,'_  he called, but she didn't go behind it; she curled her fingers into it, fiercely, and pulled on the lacy, multicoloured pattern that was set into its surface; some of the net along the wall broke free, and he saw the glittering strings wind themselves around her arms, her legs; they melted into her skin, and she became a little bit brighter.

' _It's hard,'_  she said,  _'To take myself out of the wall. I don't know if I should… but it's how I can stay, and fix the holes...'_  And when he looked back at the wall behind him, he saw that there was a sizeable expanse now that was nothing but cold, hard, grey blankness. When he reached past Calista to press his hand against the wall again, the section he touched felt nothing like his daughter anymore. He looked down the length of the wall; if she kept taking herself from it, soon none of it would belong to her, anymore.

' _Calista, where did this wall come from?'_  He felt Bellatrix, and, in the shimmery, lacy patterns, he felt his daughter; but how had they woven together like this? And how was it so strong?

She was crouched down again, feeding the net beneath them, but she paused at his question, looked up at him.  _'She made it. She… she made it, but not all by herself. She steals from me, takes my magic and puts it in the wall. I don't know how.'_

She locked her eyes onto his, but he couldn't see them well enough to read anything in them.  _'Please don't let her steal the rest of me,'_  she said, and even though he couldn't see her very clearly, he could feel the desperation in her voice. And then,  _'I'm running out of words'._

He looked down, as she returned to her task; a gaping hole opened up, just in front of her, and the sea frothed threateningly below them; She pushed another thread out at it, and when he concentrated on it, he could hear his own voice pulsing from the bright green strand:  _Despite all of your best efforts to ensure otherwise, I actually like you_.

There was a distant rumble, like thunder. Calista's eyes went wide with fear.  _'She's coming,'_  she whispered, frantically,  _'She must have felt that I took some back from the wall… she'll take it again!'_

And he could feel her coming, too; could feel a familiar presence, one that had some of the iron from the wall, and huge quantities of madness, like the sea below. But he had used more strength than he had known he'd need to get here, and he knew he didn't have enough left to battle her, now; if she discovered him here, it might only make things worse for Calista. He leaned forward, tried to grab her shoulders again; this time, she was neither fully solid or totally insubstantial, but something in between.  _'I'm going to come back,'_ he said, and then he wrapped his arms around her, around the shadow-girl that flickered in and out of reality.  _'But in the meantime… you need words?'_

She nodded; he felt the point of her chin tap lightly on his shoulder. He kept his arms around her, pressed his mouth to her ear. ' _I love you, Calista. My strong, clever daughter,'_ he said, and he could feel a burst of power flow between them; it felt like a bomb had gone off in his chest, but curiously, he did not feel any weaker, even though his daughter was rapidly materialising in his arms; she grew solid, opaque, and he could see, at last, into the depths of her eyes. He had chosen his words carefully, and it seemed that he had chosen the right ones, because he could see her spark, fierce and true, now. She would fight, she would hold the net strong; he could only hope, now, that she could do it long enough for him to regain his own strength, could keep enough of herself alive, until he could come back and rout Bellatrix from the iron-and-sea lair she had created inside of their daughter.

The thunder was rumbling closer, and a flash of lightning rent the space between them and the wall; reluctantly, Severus let go of Calista, and then, because he had spent too much time holding her, he had to leave quickly, before Bellatrix saw him there; he called himself back into his own mind, propelled rapidly back through the hole he had made in the outermost barrier, slammed back into himself with a force that left him shaken, and nursing a severe headache.

**(¯ˆ·.¸¸.·ˆ¯)**

Severus felt indescribably drained; he knew that before he could possibly hope to re-enter his daughter's mind and confront Bellatrix, he badly needed to rest. While there were potions that could energise and rejuvenate the body, even potions to improve his focus and sharpen his mind, there was no potion or spell in existence that could replenish psychic energy, that could refill the pool of magic that occlumency and legilimency drew from; for that, the only cure was good, old-fashioned sleep.

But he couldn't sleep just yet; he had more than his own safety and his daughter's to ensure. There was a whole castle of sleeping students to worry about, and the fact of the matter was that a convicted Death Eater was, in a manner of speaking, inside its walls. The hostile presence that was/wasn't his daughter glared at him from his own desk chair; he reached for her, experimentally, and he saw her hands tense, her fingers curl like small claws. Her eyes glittered coldly, and he knew that Bellatrix had more control than Calista did, at this moment. He knew he could probably coax Calista out again, find the light in her eyes, if he called to her, but there was no point just now; he couldn't do anything until he had restored himself.

He cast a Stunning Spell on her, and she slumped unconsciously in the chair, eyes closing. He gathered her limp form in his arms, and was startled to realise that she barely fit anymore; she was still small for her age, but small for ten and small for six were not the same thing. Her limbs were getting lankier, too: they nearly spilled out of his arms as he carried her out of his office and through the corridors of the castle.

He slipped into the hospital wing; moonlight streamed through the windows, casting an otherworldly light on the stark white curtains that divided the beds, giving them a luminescence that was at once eerie and beautiful. Something shuffled in the darkness, and Poppy Pomfrey appeared, bustling, to meet him at the door.

"Severus?" she asked, quietly, even though, as far as he could tell, all of the beds were empty, "What's wrong - who's this?" She glanced up at the ceiling sconces, and the room was faintly lit, one candle in each fixture flickering. She took a good look at the child's face, recognising it as one that she had seen more than once, trailing behind Snape as they walked through the castle, across the grounds. "Your daughter," she murmured, surprised. He usually kept such a close watch on her that it had seemed next to impossible that she would ever wind up here, in need of Poppy's ministrations. "What happened, then?"

"She's only Stunned right now," Severus said quietly; he glanced at the row of beds now that there was some light in the room. They were all unoccupied. "But I need to go and get the Headmaster. She's - here, can I put her down?"

Poppy nodded, stepped over to one of the empty beds, and pulled the covers down. Severus deposited Calista's deadweight form into the bed, and the two of them pulled the covers back over her. "Don't get close, or say anything to her, if she wakes," Severus warned, "If she tries to run away, you can Stun her again - I don't have time to explain, but she may be a danger."

Poppy patted the covers, looked down at the little girl. It was difficult to imagine that the skinny little thing could pose any sort of risk at all, but Severus wasn't given to falsehoods, as far as she knew. "Go on, then," Poppy said, "I'll keep a careful eye on her."

Severus nodded, and left the hospital wing in a rush, his robes fairly whipping around the corner, as he cut a path to the Headmaster's office. He knew that if he tapped his wand at the right place on the gargoyle statue outside the office, that a chime would sound in Dumbledore's private chambers, alerting him to the fact that someone was at his office door; it was something only the professors knew, and, in the wee morning hours like this, it was used very sparingly.

He tapped the gargoyle, waited what felt like an eternity; then, the office door opened, and Albus Dumbledore was looking at him over the rim of his trademark half-moon spectacles, clad in magenta dressing robes. "What's wrong, Severus?" he asked, because something  _had_ to be wrong, for Severus to be standing outside his office at three in the morning, wearing a look of distress.

"A matter of school security," he said, stepping back to let the Headmaster out into the corridor, "And a great deal of danger, for my daughter. She's in the hospital wing now; I'll explain on the way there."

And he did, in a low, urgent voice as the two of them walked quickly through the corridors. He described the cold, hostile flashes of emotion that he had felt, now and then over the past couple of weeks, when he touched her skin, the way that she had gone nearly catatonic again, the way her eyes were blank and empty. He explained how he had entered her mind, the near-impenetrable set of barriers he had found there.

"It's Bellatrix, Albus, I'm certain of it. I don't know how she managed to lodge herself in Calista's mind, but she's there, and she's nearly in complete control."

"Thank you for bringing this to my attention immediately," Albus said, "It is no minor thing to have one of Voldemort's most loyal servants infiltrating Hogwarts, no matter how it's being done." They reached the door to the hospital wing now, and Albus pushed it open.

Poppy met them at the door, again. "She came to, and tried to dash out of here," she said, "Severus, I'm sorry, but I had to Stun her again."

"It's all right, Poppy," he said, glancing at the bed where his daughter lay; she was still, again.

"I can give her a sleeping draught," Poppy offered, but Severus shook his head. He looked like he wanted to say more, but he glanced at the mediwitch warily.

"Poppy, would you be so kind as to brew us a spot of tea?" Dumbledore asked, and she nodded, leaving the two men alone.

"I think Bellatrix invaded her mind while Calista was sleeping," Severus said, once Poppy was out of earshot. It wasn't that he didn't trust the mediwitch; he did, more or less, but, as always, most of the secrets he was sharing were not his, and he didn't want to divulge Calista's past to anyone he didn't need to. It was hers to share, if and when she ever chose to. "I think it has something to do with the nightmares that she's been having."

"Severus, my first concern must always be to the other students; Is Bellatrix contained safely, or does she have control of Calista's body? That is to say, will she try and steal someone's wand and begin casting curses?"

"I don't think so," Severus said, "But I am not completely certain."

"You entered her mind; tell me, Severus, do you feel that you can eliminate the threat, using legilimency?"

"She's managed, somehow, to take control of most of Calista's magic, and added it to her own strength. But it's still Calista's magic, and if it's being used against her will, there will be chinks in the armour. As long as I can still reach Calista, I believe that I can get through both barriers with enough energy to spare to handle Bellatrix; but I can't do it now, Albus. I'm exhausted, my energy's drained."

"Then we need to keep Calista under lock and key while you recover. How long do you need?"

Severus calculated, judged how much he had been depleted. "Eight hours," he said, "Maybe ten."

"You said a sleeping draught would be harmful," Albus said, "But I would prefer not to have to use any sort of force on a child. Do you have any other ideas to keep her from posing a threat to the castle while you recover?"

Severus hesitated. "I could… I could dose her with a Draught of Living Death," he said, "It's… it's something of a risk, but it won't allow her to dream, and I think that will sufficiently protect her from further intrusion."

"In this, I will abide by your decision," Albus said, and Severus nodded.

"I don't like it, but I think it's our best option," he finally said. He swept back to the dungeons, collected the vial of the potent sleeping draught from the same locked drawer in his desk where he had kept the Veritaserum, and returned to the hospital wing with it.

Poppy had returned with Albus' tea, and the older man sipped at it, even as he kept a watchful eye on the bed where the child lay. She woke again, as Severus entered the room, and flailed out when he drew close, vial in hand. He took her wrists in one hand, used the other to pour half the contents of the vial onto her tongue. Almost immediately, she stopped struggling. Her eyelids drifted shut, and she fell into a deep sleep.

"I'll be back here as soon as I have recovered enough of my strength," Severus said, and Albus nodded.

"I will meet you here, in case I am needed," Albus said, and he looked down at his wristwatch. "It is nearly four o'clock now; shall we meet at two o'clock in the afternoon?"

"The potion should keep her sleeping through then," Severus said, "I'll be here sooner, if I'm able."

**(¯ˆ·.¸¸.·ˆ¯)**

Severus fell into an exhausted, but restorative sleep. When he rose, slightly past one o'clock, he could feel the core of strength in himself, replenished. Still, he knew that it was likely that, by now, the hole he'd cut in Bellatrix's barrier would likely have been repaired; and he knew now that there were at least  _two_ of these to contend with before he could reach her proper, and battle with her.

However, he had woken with a plan. If Bellatrix could harness Calista's magical potential and use it to construct the barriers, there was no reason that he couldn't use his daughter as well, although in an entirely different way. He had seen that Calista could, with effort, pull pieces of herself away from Bellatrix, reclaim threads of her own magic, her own memories. As much as he would have liked to believe that the strength of Calista's will alone was enabling her to fight Bellatrix's control, she was only a child, and Bellatrix was a full-grown, and  _very_ willful witch, with powers that the child could not hope to contend with, yet.

No, the reason that Bellatrix was having trouble fully controlling Calista's magic was because magic, by nature, was deeply rooted in the soul; not only did it  _want_  to be back inside of the soul it belonged to, but to wield magic successfully required a certain degree of inner harmony; if Bellatrix could not control Calista's magic fully, it was because the magic didn't  _want_  to be wielded by Bellatrix.

No matter how much she wanted to, Bellatrix would not be able to bend Calista's very soul to her will, not if the child didn't want to be controlled - but Bellatrix already knew that; that was why she had torn the foundations out of the child's mind, had opened the way to the icy, raging sea of madness right beneath Calista's feet. She was trying to drain as much as she possibly could out of the girl, before she tossed her aside to drown.

But he reflected, as he forced himself to eat a quick breakfast, that, of the threads of remembered words that Calista was using to shield herself from Bellatrix's insane ocean, a proportionally large number of them were the green ones, that reverberated with his own voice, the things he had said to her over the past few years. Perhaps her soul, her core of being that was represented in the little avatar of her he had seen in her mind, could be convinced to work for  _him_ , instead. He didn't need the bulk of her raw, untrained power; he had plenty of his own. What he needed was for her to hide him, to help him slip behind the barriers without using all of his strength up right from the start.

But he had to get to her somehow, to communicate his plan and see if she was willing, if she was able, to help him sneak past Bellatrix's defences.

He went into his office, opened the cover of her journal. It looked blank, but he hoped that she would still be able to see what he wrote in it, if he could reach the real Calista. He set his quill to the first page in the book, wrote out what he needed to.

**(¯ˆ·.¸¸.·ˆ¯)**

He explained to Albus, briefly, what his plan was, and then, together, they waited for the child to wake from the heavy slumber provided by the potion. At last, her eyelids fluttered open; Severus leaned over the bed.

"Calista," he said softly, watching her eyes; they were hard, dark, blank - but no, there was a tiny pinprick of light. "Calista," he called again, and he saw it glow, just a tiny bit brighter. He took her journal from his pocket, opened it to the first page. "See if you can read what I've written," he said. She sat up, eyes going from her father to Dumbledore and back again.

She took the book from him, flipped through the pages; he couldn't tell if it looked blank to her, if it was Bellatrix that was seeing through her eyes, or if she was looking through pages and pages of her own writing. Maybe what he'd written hadn't stayed, once he'd given it to her. He took her hand, gently, and helped her turned back to the first page.

She narrowed her eyes; he felt a flash of the -

_\- hatred and power and fire, red-hot -_

"Calista," he said keenly, and the flash of seething rage softened to the warmth of regular skin. Her eyes moved over the page, and she held out her hand, weakly, for a quill. He took the one from his pocket, the one he had written with, and pressed it into her hand.

In stuttering, jagged motions, she wrote; he could tell that it was a struggle to keep control of her own hand, to keep her eyes on the page. After a few minutes, she handed the book back.

Albus watched from a few paces away, ready to intervene if Severus could not do this thing, if he could not successfully slip past Bellatrix's barriers and rout the Dark witch from the child's mind.

Severus looked down; he could see what both of them had written, plain on the first page:

_Calista - I am going to enter your mind, again, but I need your help. I need you to find me, when I am outside the barrier, and show me the way through it, just like I showed you the way to push your own thoughts into my mind, long ago. I know you are strong enough - just guide me through, in a spot where your own power guards the wall, and I will save you from her._

_Ok_  she had written, and then, underneath it:  _please help me i am scared_

She had not bothered with punctuation, and the writing was unbelievably messy, worse even than her usual writing, but he made the message out. There was one more thing he had to know, before he began. He took the quill.

_How did she get in?_

This, he had to know, because the only way  _out_  of another person's mind was the way you had come in; if he was going to clear Bellatrix from her mind, he had to force her out the same way she had come.

He handed the book and quill back to Calista. He could see her read the words, knew that she understood, but she was struggling to bring the quill to the page. He reached out, put his arms around her shoulders, steadied the book with one hand, and the hand that held the quill with his other. He pressed his mouth to her ear, whispered something in it that was only for the two of them.

Her fingers tightened on the quill, and he watched over her shoulder, as she drew its tip, hard, purposefully, across the page.

_she made me have the knife dream she was real she looked in my eyes and climbed in_

She handed the journal to him, even though he had already been able to read it. He tucked it back into his pocket, drew his wand out instead.

He locked his own black eyes onto hers. He focused on that distant pinprick of light, that told him she wasn't defeated, yet.

"Ready, Calista?" he murmured, and, for the second time, lifted his wand.

" _Legilimens."_


	15. "You're strong enough; I know you are. I see it in your eyes all the time."

Severus approached the broad, strong wall in the forefront of his daughter's mind. He could feel Bellatrix's signature radiating off of it, but he could feel, also, traces of his daughter, places where her own power had been laced into its construction. He sought out the place where he had burst through before, and couldn't believe his luck.

As he expected, the hole had been repaired; but it had been hastily patched with a bit of psychic energy that was weaker, even flimsy, compared to the rest of the iron-strong wall. It would not have been overly difficult to break through in the same spot again, but he didn't need to. The hole had been filled in with Calista's magic, not Bellatrix's. He could see, now, when he passed a psychic tendril over the spot, that Bellatrix was slowly adding her own strength to fortify it; he had returned just in time, then.

He reached out with a thread of thought, brushed against the glowing, multi-coloured patch in the wall, the spot that felt strongly of Calista. He felt her recognise him, and then he felt her panic; a thread from the cluster of magic latched onto his own psychic tendril:  _help me help me help me_.

He summoned another tendril, crafted it into a filament that echoed the golden wall he had built in her mind once, long ago, to keep her nightmares at bay, and let her sleep, for once, untroubled. He hoped that she would recognise it, would be soothed by it, so she would rein in her panic enough to help him ease through the wall, without having to use force. The more strength that he could save for his final confrontation with the malign presence in her mind, the better. He reflected, briefly, on the irony that both of her parents had now erected walls in their daughter's mind; but he had done it to protect her. Bellatrix was doing it to control her.

It seemed to be working; he felt the edge of panic dull, as the golden filament intertwined with the panicked thread of her own thought. He wanted to communicate to her a reminder of what she was supposed to do, to let him slip through, but there wasn't enough of her here to really speak to; instead, he had to depend on a baser form of psychic communication. He sent another tiny filament out, echoing again the way that he had blocked her shadows in the past. And then, a gap appeared in the patched spot on the wall. Severus took his chance, slipped through the first barrier.

The fog beyond it had thickened since he had last been here; crossing it was more like wading through water. He looked down, checking on the state of the net that supported him, the web of woven multi-coloured threads of words that Calista had been repairing last time. He felt a jolt of fear; the net was impossibly sparse, with gaping holes large enough for his foot to fall through scattered everywhere. Even the threads that remained were thin, fine, stretched devastatingly tight. When he reached down to touch one, a delicate, gossamer blue thread, he barely heard a soft echo of words.  _His name is Yellow._

He pressed through the fog, watching his footing carefully. Icy sea-spray came up from below, burned his ankles like acid when it splashed on him. Twice, he had to backtrack and find another route across the delicate net, because the gaps ahead of him were too large. At last, he reached the second barrier. There was no sign of his daughter here, but he did see, where they had stood before, together, that there was a section of the web beneath him that looked stronger, in better repair than the rest of it. Thick green ropes reinforced all of the junctions in this section.

Underneath him, a thread snapped; he stumbled, and shifted over to the stronger section of the web, watched a hole open up where he had been standing that was easily large enough for him to fall through. He was running out of time.

' _Calista,'_  he called, and he fixed his gaze on the wall that she had come through before, but there was no tell-tale shimmer, and, even though he could feel her presence nearby, he couldn't see any sign of the ghostly embodiment of her self that he had seen before. He stepped up to the wall, pressed his hand against it, feeling for her in the lacy patterns that were entrenched in the wall. There was a faint pulse of her; and then, her hand, small and translucent, came through the wall, curled fingers tightly around his own.

She was trying to pull him through the wall, pull him to her, but it wasn't working. The thick, sturdy barrier between them was still blocking him from following her. He felt along the wall, with his hands and his mind; it was quite as strong as it looked. He would be able to get through, but if he had to resort to force, he would be substantially weaker than he was now, once he got through.

He had an idea; he remembered their legilimency lesson, from when she was younger, recalled the little bubble he had created to contain the knowledge he wanted her to have. He made a similar bubble, enclosed a flash of memory that showed the page of her journal where they both had written, the instructions he'd given her to help him through. He pushed this bubble out through his hand, much as Calista had pushed out the words that she had used to repair the net; he saw the bubble touch the skin of her own hand, and she absorbed it.

' _Like before,'_  he urged her,  _'It is just like before, only in reverse. Remember how I reached out with my mind, and guided your towards mine; I need you to do that, Calista. Reach out to me, with your mind, show me the way through.'_

He sent her another little bubble, with pieces of his memory from that day enclosed in it. He was afraid, for an instant, that he had overwhelmed her, because her hand began to fade in his; her fingers became insubstantive, and his own clawed at air, trying to reach her again. But then, the wall in front of him shimmered, and he thought perhaps she was coming through again. But she didn't - instead, a thick, strong tendril of her mind snaked out; it was silvery, glimmering. It was beautiful, familiar, and inside it, he could see that it was not truly silver, but was made of many fine, colourful threads twisted together. It wrapped itself around his wrist, and he could feel it trying to pull him through the wall.

' _The weak spot, Calista,'_  he said,  _'Show me the weak spot, where I can slip through.'_

There was a pause, and the silvery glow of the tendril began to fade; she was losing strength, wasn't going to be able to help him through…

' _You have magic,'_  he reminded her,  _'It's not all hers. Find it, use it. You're strong enough; I know you are. I see it in your eyes all the time. Don't let her win, Calista. Fight her, take some of yourself back, and bring me through the wall.'_

He sent another tendril out, a thick thread of gold again, another piece like the wall he had once sheltered her with. The silvery rope uncoiled from his wrist, reached out to meet the seeking gold thread from his mind; they twisted together, and even though it was technically different, it felt as if they were holding hands again; but this time, her grip was sure and strong. She pulled the two tendrils, twined together, along the wall a short distance, and then a piece of the diamond-netted pattern of colours on the surface of the wall began to melt away, dissolving the iron wall behind it like acid.

The effort cost her, because the silvery thread began to fade again, dissolving rapidly into the darkness around them; but it didn't matter, because she had done it, she had managed to pull him through the second wall. The rest of him followed the gold psychic thread through, even as the wall sealed shut again behind him.

And here, beyond the second wall, was utter chaos.

Memories swirled around here, whirling and flapping like crazed birds; he heard the echo of a scream, felt the press of fear breeze by his ear. Through it, finally, he caught a glimpse of his daughter's avatar, the image of herself that represented the core of her soul. She was crouched in a defensive position, while the darkest and vilest of her memories swooped around her, retreated, and came crashing back. She was thinly there, less than a ghost, but that didn't make sense, because he could  _feel_ her here, all around him, and there was still more to her than these horrors. He ducked beneath a screeching, howling scrap of memory that was Bellatrix in a murderous rage; slipped past an image of a dark room where Calista cried, alone.

He approached her spirit-form, reached his hand out to her, but she wasn't solid enough to touch, anymore. And then, he noticed something that he had not seen at first, something that gave him hope that she was still here enough to save. Tiny, fragile threads of silver, each no wider than a human hair, were coming out of her in all directions, stretching far away into the shadows around the edges of her mind. He followed one at random, floated along it, avoiding the wild, screeching, flying things that darted around them both. At last, he came to the thread's end, saw that it led to a small, silver bubble of a memory. When he reached out to touch it, the memory played itself back to him.

_She was sitting up in her bed; her eyes darted around the room. Was the sitting room gone? Was she back in the safe place? Someone else was here, in the room with her, but who was it? The someone leaned forward, and it was a man, a man with a long nose, dark eyes like hers. His mouth was moving; he was saying something, but she couldn't hear it over her own screams. Were they her real screams or just the memory of old ones? She didn't know… and then he was reaching out to her, and what if it was a trick? What if it was really_ her _? Warm arms around her now, and at first she tried to slip out of them, but then she realised that it didn't feel scary at all, didn't feel anything like the cold memory of her mother, felt instead like a place that she could hide, if she chose to. She leaned into him, and finally she could hear what he was saying. 'You're safe", over and over, and the more he said it the more she remembered; things had changed. She lived in the safe place now, and this man was her father, and he never hurt her._

He tore himself away from the memory, searched in the whirling, seething mess of memories for another silver bubble. He found one, connected to the end of a fine silver thread, which undoubtedly led back to the center, where Calista's ghostlike inner self was here/not here with each flicker. He touched the next silvery bubble, saw the memory inside.

_She was walking, and she had a bag of candy in her hand. Every Flavour Beans, it said on the package, and it certainly seemed to be true; there were beans of every colour imaginable. She took a few out and examined them, sniffed them experimentally. Some of them, she could tell by the colour and the smell what they were likely to taste like, but others, she couldn't. She bit one, and it tasted terrible, like vomit. She couldn't help but make a face, but she looked up sidelong at her father. Had he seen her expression? Maybe not… she bit back a grin. 'Here, try this one,' she said, holding the other half of it out. It would be funny to trick him, to see him make the same face she must have done. 'What does it taste like?' he asked, and she'd invented an answer. 'Er, something fruity.' But he didn't believe her; he smiled wryly. 'What does it really taste like?" and she had to tell him the truth, didn't get to see him make a funny face. But it was okay, she was still having fun with him. She thought that, even though he was now teasing her about getting a job tasting vomit-flavoured beans, he was still her favourite person she had ever met._

Both of the silvery bubbles felt the same, on the outside; they felt, purely and truly, like Calista, and he realised that she did still have control of part of her magic, of part of the pool of potential that lived in her mind. The bubbles were, in fact, tiny little pockets of memories, her favourite memories, and they were shielded by delicate, fragile skins that were no more substantive than the meniscus of a real bubble, but they had been shaped by occlumency; once more, her magic had shown itself when it was most needed, creating tiny psychic shields for her good memories, so they wouldn't be swept up in the storm that raged around them, wouldn't be taken and twisted by Bellatrix.

He traced his way back to the center of all the threads, where they joined with the fading, flickering image of Calista. She was even more faint than she had been before; she couldn't keep herself steady much longer, and now there was a rumble of psychic thunder, a blinding flash of rage, and he knew that Bellatrix was coming. Her good memories had anchored her here, to her own mind, but Bellatrix was a full-grown witch, with a fair measure of talent for both occlumency and legilimency, and Calista was no match for her, truly.

Working quickly, the threat of Bellatrix imminent all round them, he reached into his own core, to draw more of his energy into Calista's mind. Since part of his mind was here already, it was easy to draw more power. Using a portion of this energy, he created a great golden sphere, something like Calista's bubbles, only infinitely more substantive, more intact. He gave it thick, strong walls, precisely like the one he had given her before, to block the shadows out.

He reached out with a sweeping tendril, followed each of the silvery threads to Calista's favourite memories; there were hundreds of them, things he couldn't imagine would matter to anyone else; a small smile they shared over breakfast, the half-hostile, half-playful back-and-forth they seemed to find themselves engaged in whenever they disagreed; his hand settling warmly over hers on the wooden handle of a knife while he showed her the correct way to split dandelion stems lengthwise; the sound of his voice, echoing dark and velvety off the stone walls of his study while he read to her.

The vast majority of the memories she had kept protected in silver bubbles were of the two of them together, but there were others, too: the rough tongue of her cat, trying to lick every last bit of treat from Calista's fingers; the surprising light sweetness of pumpkin juice the first time she had tried it; the feel of summer sun warm on the crown of her head. and then, one of the last ones he came to: Calista sitting on an an unfamiliar overstuffed sofa, while someone read aloud to her, someone that wasn't Severus. When the man in the memory glanced up from his book, Severus recoiled involuntarily; it was Remus Lupin, the very same one who had nearly murdered him in werewolf form, once.

He was tempted, sorely, to neglect this memory, to leave it, solitary and forgotten, in the maelstrom that swirled around them, the chaotic whirlwind that was part Bellatrix, and part Calista, the darkest memories and worst fears she had. For an instant, he held all of the other silver memories gathered, left that last one out; but he couldn't. There was no telling how important or unimportant it was; it could have been as casual a memory as any of the dozens of times she'd tried a new Bertie Botts' bean flavour, or it could have been the first time she was around another person without feeling threatened, could be the cornerstone for her ability to trust him, Severus, now. There was no way of knowing. He swept it up too, and now he held all of her good memories, poured them all into the golden bubble he had created.

Another blinding flash of rage crackled in the air around him like lightning; and now he could see a glimmer, like he'd seen when Calista first came through the barrier towards him, but he knew in an instant that it wasn't Calista.

He wrapped his searching tendril of thought around Calista's flimsy avatar, gathered her like she was one of her memories, and certainly she felt as fragile as one of those tiny bubbles. He encased her in the gold shield, too, slipped her into it like a caterpillar into a cocoon. He didn't have any more time. He had to hope that, protected from the chaos around them, and bolstered by her happiest memories, she would be able to keep herself, her soul, intact.

An image of Bellatrix materialised in front of him. He had expected her to appear as she had the last time he had seen him, but something had changed. She looked disheveled, gaunt, and there was something different about her eyes; they seemed to rage and froth, much like the sea that had churned below his feet in the previous chamber of whatever Bellatrix had turned Calista's mind into.

She lifted her chin haughtily, managed to look down her nose at him, even though he knew that, in the physical world, at least, he was taller than she.

' _Hello, Severus,'_  she said, artificially friendly. He wasn't fooled by the syrup in her voice… not as he once had been.  _'It's been a long time, hasn't it?'_

' _What do you want, Bellatrix? Why are you here?'_

Bellatrix stepped closer, raised an eyebrow. ' _What do I want? Well, I should think that were obvious, even to you, Sevvy. In case you hadn't heard, I've been in Azkaban for some time now, and it's_ awfully _dull.'_

Severus began sending out psychic tendrils, slowly, while he faced Bellatrix. There were two things he needed to find out: Firstly, he needed to know precisely how she had gotten in, so he could force her back out the same way, and secondly, he needed to know where she had anchored herself in Calista's mind. In order to force her permanently out, he'd need to remove that anchor point as well.

Bellatrix smiled, a cold, dark thing.  _'I want to be free, of course. They won't let me out; so I decided to let myself_ in _.'_

She threw her head back and laughed, as if she had made the most marvelous joke.

' _How did you do it?'_  he asked, trying to sound as if he were merely impressed; he suppressed any thoughts about why he wanted to know, and he was glad he had done so, because Bellatrix leaned forward, looked him right in the eye. He kept searching, sending threads out in all directions. As long as he kept her focused on their conversation, and as long as he was careful, he thought he could find the anchor point before she knew what he was doing.

' _It was very clever of me, wasn't it?'_  she said,  _'I thought of it when a dementor made me relive, over and over, the memory of the night I lost Calista, to that fool Dumbledore's cronies. Imagine the humiliation… and then, you know, I couldn't track her, some sort of perimeter spells wherever they were keeping her… and I was so very vexed, because I knew I had been so careful to ensure that I_ would _be able to track her, if she was ever taken.'_

' _The Dark Mark,'_ he guessed. It fit with what Calista had written:  _she made me have the knife dream she was real she looked in my eyes and climbed in_

' _Oh, so you did see it, then? What do you think, Severus? Is it a good replica?'_

' _Not really,'_  he said, because he didn't trust himself to say anything else.

_Well, I was never very artistic,'_  she said, mock-ruefully.  _'But Tom wouldn't give her a real one, yet.'_

' _What a surprise,'_  he mused sarcastically to her,  _'I recall how fond he was of children'._

Bellatrix's eyes flashed, and she narrowed them into a glare.  _'You haven't told me why_ you're  _here.'_

' _Well, we've never been very good with communication, have we, Bella? I don't believe you ever told me that I was a father, for instance.'_

Aha. One of his searching tendrils had uncovered a cluster of memories that reeked of Bellatrix's psychic signature.

' _You can't possibly be upset about that, Severus? What would you have done if I'd told you? Would you have asked me to marry you, bought us a puppy?'_

Derision dripped from her words, and her lip curled.

Severus had found the anchor, and it had answered his other question, too. She had anchored herself inside of Calista's memory of the night that Bellatrix had carved the Dark Mark into her skin; and the memory of it was how she had gotten in, too, just as Calista had tried to tell him. He examined the memory, forcefully tamped down any emotional response to it; he couldn't betray himself to Bellatrix. If she knew he had found her anchor, she would know what he was trying to do.

' _I must say,'_ Severus said, partly to keep her distracted, and partly because it was something that had caught his interest.  _'I'm surprised that losing Calista affected you so deeply that it became a memory the dementors could exploit.'_

Dementors could not work with memories that didn't have emotion ingrained within them; did this mean, then, that in her own twisted way, Bellatrix did truly care for her daughter? Had she missed the sound of the child's footfalls on the stairs, the sight of her dark head bent low over her journal?

' _Of course it affected me,'_  she said,  _'I've invested so much in her; the Dark Mark is only a piece of it. She was supposed to be a gift, the ultimate gift, to the Dark Lord. Imagine a servant loyal from birth, raised from earliest breath to love Him. And if she was talentless, or witless… well, a sacrifice is also a very good gift.'_

' _So that's all she was to you,'_  Severus wasn't certain if he was successful in concealing his disgust, wasn't even certain if he wanted to be successful.  _'A valuable trophy you'd lost.'_

Severus redirected the threads of his mind that he'd sent searching through Calista's mind, wrapped them instead in slow, concentric circles around where Bellatrix had manifested her psychic core in Calista's mind.

' _A trophy?'_  Bellatrix questioned, raising an eyebrow.  _'A trophy is a spoil from something you've already won; no, the trophy would have been if He had sired her.'_  she smirked.  _'Perhaps I will earn a trophy though, soon enough. Now that I am free, I will find the Dark Lord, and help him return to power. As soon as He breaks his servants out of Azkaban, I can return to my own body, and I still have this one to offer as a sacrifice...'_

Severus began feeding more and more of his own energy into the circles he'd placed around Bellatrix.

She tilted her head, and a note of regret entered her voice.  _'I wish I could still offer her as a servant. It seems such a waste to kill her, now that I've seen she did have potential after all; but once I'm gone, she'll be mad or she'll be a husk. I must remember that it is all for the greater good.'_

At last, Severus thought he had gathered enough of his strength into the trap he'd set around Bellatrix; it was one of her flaws, to become so engrossed in her own grandiose plans that she missed what was happening around her, and he'd counted on it.

' _Aren't you forgetting something, Bella?'_  Severus taunted, tone light.

' _Oh, how ungrateful of me,'_  Bellatrix said,  _'Of course, I should thank you for find her, and keeping her alive for me. You've proven a most useful lover, Severus, even after the fact.'_

He spring the trap then, and the coils of thought snaked around her, binding her. Seeing, too late, what he had done, Bellatrix screamed with rage, struggled against the gleaming mental cords that held her tight; but he was stronger than she, and he had not weakened himself getting past her barriers, as she likely expected he would have.

Severus used one tendril to cover her mouth. It was critical that she heard what he said next, because it was the only thing that might protect him, if the Dark Lord did return, from incurring punishment for interfering with Bellatrix's plan.

' _You forget, Bella. Calista does have two parents,'_  Severus said silkily,  _'And I'm afraid we disagree, one one point. I think she'll make a better servant than a sacrifice; and now, you see,_ I'm _the one who's made an investment. I've been training her in the Dark Arts, and it seems she's quite a willing student, when she isn't being tortured out of her wits. You should have been patient, Bella; but you weren't, and I am, and that's why, when the Dark Lord returns, it will be_ my _daughter that he seeks to recruit.'_

Bellatrix writhed with rage; he could feel it radiating off her, echoing off the boundaries of Calista's mind.

He didn't know if his bluff would be enough to explain away, if it ever came to it, why he had done what he was about to, but it was the best one he had come up with, and plausible enough that he hoped it would suffice.

He reached for the cluster of memories where Bellatrix had anchored herself; there was the original memory of how Calista had gotten the scars on her back, and then countless others where Bellatrix had reminded her of it, or forced her to relive it in dreams while she slept. He tore the fabric of the original memory open, forced Bellatrix through it the way she had come.

Now, as the scene of Bellatrix's invasion played out in reverse in Calista's memory, he saw precisely how she had done it; saw how she had forced Calista to revisit the memory, over and over, in her dreams, when she was vulnerable to psychic suggestion, then how she had exploited and exaggerated Calista's vulnerability through repeated exposure to the memory, over months and months; how had he not known that the sudden uptick in "the knife dream" had been so critically important? And then, when Calista's mind was weak, Bellatrix had used an astral form of legilimency, and when she looked into Calista's eyes in her dream, it had somehow enabled her to invade her mind entirely, possess it for herself.

Bellatrix had entrenched herself well; it took a tremendous amount of effort, of energy, for Severus to force her out. She was strong, even after her time in Azkaban, and it took most of his energy; he pushed her core out of Calista, and he knew that as soon as he had forced Bellatrix beyond the edge of Calista's mind, the psychic cord that connected her to her own body would take over, would snap her back to herself.

But he wasn't done; as the last waves of her outrage faded, and the whirlwind and thunder with it, he set to combing through the remains of Calista's mind, seeking all traces of Bellatrix's presence. He couldn't risk leaving anything behind that she could use to reach Calista again, to damage her further.

He knew the instant she was gone, because her barriers melted away; bits of her remained, tangled in the tapestry that was his daughter's mind, her own pool of magical potential. He would have to separate it out, banish the bits that belonged to Bellatrix, hope that he could repair the bits that did not.

It didn't require a great deal of psychic energy, but it was tedious, to search through every scrap of memory that remained in Calista's mind, sorting those that felt like her, belonged to her, from those that did not. And although it didn't cost a lot of his energy to search out and discard memories that did not belong to Calista, it was a different sort of difficult. He had already sealed Calista's core in a protective shield, and with it, all of her happy memories. what remained were the fear, the anger, the shadows. He had given Calista all the best of herself, to let her try and recover, and he was left now with the darkest scraps.

When at last he was satisfied that he had removed all of Bellatrix's presence from her mind, he gathered the memories that Bellatrix had used to anchor herself; they were all Calista's, but they had been exploited, could be exploited again, in precisely the same way.

He gathered these memories, sealed them in another protective bubble; this was a silvery shield, but it had none of the luminescence that Calista had given the ones around her favourite memories. This was the dulled metal of manacles, of prison bars. He pushed this to the very forefront of Calista's mind, and then he set about repairing the rest of it.

**(¯ˆ·.¸¸.·ˆ¯)**

Bellatrix was gone, but the holes she had created were not; The tapestry of Calista's mind was still weak, stretched too thin. Where Bellatrix had merged their talents together, Calista was left with great tangled knots of magic and memory, mangled senselessly together. Severus untangled these as best he could, separating the multicoloured threads of her mind with his own, and releasing them.

They should have reformed, woven themselves together in the right pattern, but without a strong Self, a fully sentient soul, they could not. All Severus could do was leave the ends of all of her mind-threads free, so that they could be reformed, if she returned fully to her mind.

Beneath the tattered net of her consciousness, the sea of madness still existed, as it exists in everyone, beneath layers of reason and comprehension. But without Bellatrix's heightened influence, it was calm and still as glass. It could be covered over, completely, if Calista chose to return to the landscape of her mind. Now that Bellatrix was not there to drain away all of the girl's energy, she would be able to repair the damage rapidly; but first, she had to return.

He remembered, suddenly, the conversation they had had, once, about modifying her memory. It seemed so long ago, now.

" _Would you do it you were me?" she had asked him, "Do you want me to forget?"_

" _Calista, those are two different questions," he'd told her, and then he'd told her the truth, the way he always tried to. "If I were in your place, I would choose to remember, because knowledge, no matter how awful it is, is power...and there is a kind of strength you can gain only by overcoming terrible things. Some people are lucky, and they never need that strength, nor do they have cause to find it, but I have never been a lucky man, so I would want it, just in case."_

_He'd smiled sadly pushed her hair back from her face, allowed himself to imagine for a moment what she might have been like, in another universe, if things had gone differently, for both of them. He'd taken her hands, looked into her eyes._

" _But my answer to your other question contradicts that, I'm afraid. I do want you to forget. I want you to smile, and laugh, and sleep through the night, without needing to worry about how strong you are. When I tell you that you are safe, I want you to believe me, the first time."_

He had answered her question, but she had never chosen, one way or the other. As he surveyed the wreckage of her mind, he thought that perhaps now he could give her the chance to make that choice.

Severus had set the rest of her memories, the rest of her mind, in order to the best of his ability, but her mind would not return to normal until her psychic core returned to it, and directed the pattern to reweave itself. Of course, Severus wanted her to return to herself immediately, to begin repairing the damage that Bellatrix had done.

But it was Calista who had been through Bellatrix's nightmare of control, who had always suffered at her mother's hands, in the physical plane as well as the psychic one; it was Calista's decision whether she would return.

Severus approached the cocoon he had made for her, looked inside. Surrounded by her best memories, and protected from all of the chaos around her by his shield, her avatar was beginning to grow solid once more, was regaining energy; but something was still wrong - her eyes were not her own. They looked happy, blindingly happy - they shone with a light that he couldn't even have imagined there, but, when he looked closer, it was an empty happiness; it was a false happiness.

But it was still happiness, and Severus thought that he didn't have the right to take that choice away from her; so he sealed the cocoon back up, except for one small spot. In this spot, he created a tiny psychic window, where she would be able to see just a glimpse of what was happening beyond the protective shield.

She would see the darkness, would perhaps make out flashes of the shadowed memories that still existed in her mind, but that he had not encased with her soul, in the cocoon. She would see the tattered, multicoloured net, the slow, undulating wave of the loose ends of her mind, the pieces that waited to be set back into place.

She would know that there was a world beyond the protective bubble, but she would not have to live in it, if she didn't want to. He pulled a set of threads from her own mind, one in each colour that he could find. A blue one, that spoke her own words, a green one, that held some of his. A red one, that carried Bellatrix's voice, because it was only fair that she have all of the information, before she decided. An orange one, a yellow one, and one for every shade in between. He gathered these, twisted them into a tight, small sphere.

And he crafted just one more bubble from his own mind; in it, he tried to capture precisely what he had meant, when he'd whispered in Calista's ear, both here, in her mind, and in the physical world, where he sat by her sickbed. It was good, he thought, that he could show her precisely how he felt, because he didn't think three words could possibly do it justice; how could they possibly explain what it felt like to build a family, for instance? A tiny, fractured, broken, and shadowed family, with big noses and glittering black eyes, and more sarcasm than the seas had water? He couldn't tell her, so he showed her, wrapped it all up in the bubble that he now used to encase the sphere of coloured threads.

He attached the whole lot to the inside of the window, fashioning a kind of mental latch. If she looked through the window, decided she wanted to risk the heartbreak, the deep shadows, the drifting, aimless threads that needed her to tell them where to weave themselves… well, then at least she would know, before she opened the window, what she was doing it all for.

Or… if she chose, she could ignore the rest of her mind, beyond the cocoon. She could leave the window closed, keep only her happiest memories, and live among them. If she chose that, eventually, the rest of her mind would decay, without the soul sustaining it, shaping it. She would, essentially, be in a coma in the physical world, would never respond to voice or touch again - but inside her mind, inside the protective shield, she would know only of the best things that had happened in her short life.

Severus had always thought that, if he had asked her again to make a choice, she would have chosen the same thing that he had admitted he would have, in her place. He judged that she was enough like him that she would rather have knowledge than relinquish it, that she would want the ability to become the best, the strongest, that she possibly could. He thought that she would have chosen, had he presented the options again, after their conversation, to remember.

But things had changed;  _she_  had changed. And there was evidence, all around him, that her mind had been changed in many, many ways, in a very real sense. There was really no way to know what she would decide, until she had done it.

Exhausted, and knowing he had done everything he could, Severus began the slow, careful ascent out of the depths of her mind. A large portion of his mind had left his body for quite a long time, fighting the intrusion in hers; he would have to take his time, or he would be in for quite a shock when he sprang back into himself. It was tiring, and he knew there was still one thing left to do, before he could lose himself in sleep to recover again.

He had to deal with one more bubble: the one where he had encapsulated the memories that Bellatrix had exploited. He had to deal with those, and quickly, before Bellatrix recovered enough to use them again.


	16. "There is a kind of strength you can gain only by overcoming terrible things.

Severus felt a physical relief as his mind was reunited; he had sent a significant amount of his psychic energy into Calista's mind, and when it all returned, it was like settling into a familiar, comfortable bed after a long and exhausting journey.

He kept just one tendril in her mind, hooked it onto the bubble at the forefront of her mind, where he had enclosed all of the memories that were tied to the scars on her back, and how Bellatrix had exploited them.

He didn't know now what would become of happier memories that referenced this memory in some way, memories where he comforted her after her nightmares. At best, they would become fuzzy, half-remembered; she might know that he had comforted her, but wouldn't recall what dream she'd had. Or, those memories might disintegrate entirely, once they were released into a mental landscape that no longer contained the original reference memory. In removing the worst of her memories, it was almost a given that he had also altered some of her happier memories, some of the ones that had finally allowed her to trust him.

Of course, all of this was only applicable if she chose the way he thought she would, if he had been correct in his opinion that she was rather a lot like him. There was a very real chance that he was wrong, that she would choose to stay cocooned with her best memories, and choose that comfort over the ability to make new ones. Severus didn't know what he could possibly do from here, if that was what she chose. He had gotten used to caring for her, interacting with her; he wanted to know what sort of person she would grow up to be, free of Bellatrix's influence. More than that, he liked her, plain and simple. He liked the bedraggled little family they had become.

But he'd offered her a choice, once, and then he'd balked from letting her make it; so now he had done that, and he hoped he didn't come to regret it.

When Severus was fully returned to himself, he looked around the room. The curtains had been drawn up around Calista's bed; he didn't know if there were other students in the hospital wing, now. He could see no one at first, besides Calista, who appeared to be in a deep sleep.

As if he had summoned her, Poppy appeared, breezing through the curtains. "Severus?" she queried. Severus looked up, nodded at her.

She tskd. "You look exhausted, my dear. But you've finished, with…?" she trailed off; she didn't know precisely  _what_  he'd finished with.

Severus nodded. "Yes."

"I'll go and send for Dumbledore then, yes? He was here for several hours, but he had to leave a little while ago. He said to call him when you were finished."

"How long have I been here?"

Poppy glanced down at her wrist. "Nearly eight hours. You've missed dinner, but I'm sure something can be sent up."

"I'll send for something to my quarters later, after I speak with the Headmaster."

Poppy nodded, and left the curtained area. She returned a moment later, and passed Severus a goblet of ice water. "Here, have this at least, dear."

Severus accepted the goblet, took a deep drink. Momentarily, Dumbledore arrived, stepped into the curtained area.

"Is it done, Severus?"

Severus nodded, again. "It is, except for one piece."

"Ah, and that is?"

Severus took another sip from the goblet, then set it down on the tiny table between the bed and the chair he sat in.

"Bel-," he paused, cocked his head. "Are there any other students in the wing?"

"There was a broken leg earlier," Poppy said, "Quidditch injury. But he's just left, so Calista is the only one again."

Severus nodded, but still didn't continue. Poppy offered Severus another gobletful of water, but when he refused, and cast a rather pointed look at the curtain, she excused herself and bustled away.

Severus returned his attention to Dumbledore. "Bellatrix's presence is gone, but it's possible she may attempt to return. Calista is… I had to shield her, before Bellatrix destroyed her mind utterly. She's still shielded, until she decides to break free of it. She'll… she'll more or less be like this until that happens."

"You said she may attempt to return. Were you able to determine how she was able to infiltrate young Calista's mind, all the way from Azkaban?"

Severus considered his words. He had never told Dumbledore about the scars on her back, had wanted to respect Calista's privacy. But telling Dumbledore  _something_  seemed a necessity, now.

"She took advantage of a shared memory that made Calista particularly vulnerable," he said quietly, "An incident of… ritualistic abuse. I'm not certain how she managed to connect to Calista in the first place, but she was able to take control of her mind by forcing her to relive the memory over and over again in her dreams."

"And you believe she may try the same tactic again?"

"It worked once," Severus said baldly, "I would be surprised if she did not."

"Then you are proposing that we remove the memory of this incident?"

"I think we will have to, to prevent it from happening again. I've already gathered the original memory, and all of the mirrored memories of it from the dreams she forced Calista to have, to the forefront of her mind. When you're ready to extract them, I can ensure the right memories come out."

"How critical is this memory, to Calista's development?" Albus asked.

"I'm not sure how many other memories will need to alter their shape because of its removal," Severus admitted, "But a byproduct of the way that Bellatrix had been systematically breaking down Calista's mind is that it was easy for me to gather the memory, and all of its dependent memories, cleanly. It… it might change the way she recalls her past, but it shouldn't damage her mind."

Severus paused, hesitating.

"Is there something else, Severus?"

"I want to destroy the memories," he said, with some difficulty, "But… the nature of the abuse… there's power in what Bellatrix did, and it's something she could use against Calista, if she were ever to escape from Azkaban and find herself in possession of a wand again. If Calista lost those memories permanently, she would be utterly unprepared to defend herself."

"Then you think the memories should be saved, so she can reacquire them in the future."

"I don't like it," Severus said, "But I think it may be necessary."

Albus nodded. "I can keep them safely in my office, if you wish," he said, "Until you feel that it is time to return them to her."

Severus hesitated again, then nodded. Dumbledore produced two delicate glass vials from a pocket of his periwinkle robes; how had he known they would be needed?

"I make a habit of carrying several of these on my person at all times," the Headmaster said, "One never knows when it will be necessary to remember something for later, hm? Will two vials suffice?"

"I think so," Severus said.

Dumbledore lifted his wand, looked to Severus for confirmation. Severus nodded. Dumbledore stepped closer to the hospital bed, and set his wand lightly against the sleeping child's temple. Severus tugged at the little tendril of his mind that he had kept connected to the memories in question in Calista's mind, and he saw the tip of Dumbledore's wand glow silvery-blue.

Dumbledore drew the wand back, and a cluster of hair-like, glowing filaments came with it. He touched the tip of the wand to the lip of the first vial, and the memories slipped into it. He stoppered the vial carefully.

"Those were the secondary memories," Severus murmured, "The original one is still there; are you ready to take it?"

Dumbledore nodded, and set his wand to the child's temple again; again, Severus tugged at the remaining memory that he had earmarked, and it manifested as a wisp of silver-blue. Dumbledore deposited the memory in the second vial, and stoppered it. Severus withdrew the tendril of thought, back into his own mind.

Dumbledore touched his wand to the glass side of each of the vials in turn, and a laser-thin bolt of silver light played across the surface of each vial for a second; when it had disappeared, both vials had engraving on the surface. Dumbledore held one out to Severus, so he could see.

_C. Snape, coll. 1987_

Severus nodded, marvelling at how such a dark thing could appear so deceptively pretty; behind the delicate engraving, the memories glimmered, not unlike the witchfire nightlight that Severus had bought for Calista one Christmas.

"I give you my word that I will keep them safe until it is time to return them," Dumbledore told him, again.

"Thank you."

There was a short silence, and then Dumbledore slipped the vials into his pocket. "Now, I must confirm, for the safety of all the students and staff. Without these memories, you believe that Bellatrix will be unable to take control of Calista's mind again?"

"It would be extremely unlikely," Severus said, "But I have an idea to make certain it doesn't occur again… Calista has something of a natural affinity for Occlumency; I want to teach her to develop the talent. I believe that she can become sufficiently skilled to block any attempts at intrusion, from Bellatrix or anyone else, given enough time and practise."

"Ah, I think that is an excellent idea, Severus. Perhaps such lessons will also give you the chance to monitor her mind for any… unusual influences?"

Severus nodded, turned his head to look at Calista; she still appeared to sleep deeply, dark hair spread across the pillow.

"Assuming she… agrees to the lessons."

_And assuming she decides to wake up again_ , he thought, to himself.

**(¯ˆ·.¸¸.·ˆ¯)**

Inside her mind, Calista was curled up, safe in a familiar golden shield. She remembered a wall just like it, inside her mind, although she couldn't remember why she had needed it. She had been scared, perhaps… although of what, she couldn't say.

She felt strange, just now. Hollowed out, like she had been drained and wrung out and twisted all up. She tried to remember what had happened to make her feel this way, but she found that she couldn't.

In fact, when she tried, she found that there were a whole lot of things that she couldn't remember. She wrinkled her nose, tried harder. Still nothing. Well, what could she remember? Maybe if she retraced the last few things she had done, she would stumble into the memory of what had made her feel so strange.

Well. She had been watching her father make a sleeping draught a few days ago. She wasn't allowed to help much with complicated potions, but she had fetched ingredients for him, watched him carefully. She remembered that he'd shown her how to crush a sopophorous bean with the flat of a blade. He'd told her that it was a more effective way to get the juice from inside the bean than cutting it.

And then, the same day, after they ate dinner, she had listened to him read from a book called  _Advanced Magical Theory_. She'd begged and begged him to read it to her, even though he'd told her it was far too advanced for her to hope to understand. It just sounded so  _interesting_ , and besides, she liked the fact that it said 'advanced' right in the title;requesting it made her feel clever. As it turned out, her father had been absolutely right: she could barely understand a word - now that she thought of it,  _had_  they all been real words, or had he made some of them up to try and prove his point? She considered whether or not he would actually do that, and decided that he probably would. She would have to remember to sneak a look at the book when he wasn't around, and see if she could see any of the ones he'd said that she suspected of not being real.

But none of that would explain the way she felt now. She felt like something really scary had happened, only… when she reached back, there was  _nothing_  scary, nothing bad. But that didn't make sense, did it? She knew she had felt bad, lots of times. Why couldn't she remember any of it, now?

She dug back further in her mind. She could remember waking up, and she had been afraid. The nightlight in her room had gone out. Her heart had been pounding, and then her father had come into the room, he'd tried to hug her… but she'd pushed him away. Why had she done that? Why had he been there in the first place? She strained her mind, thought as hard as she could, but still came up with nothing more than a fuzzy, half-there impression of fear, a few flashes of images. Dark curtains… why did she think those had frightened her?

Well, there was no sense trying to remember any more. It wasn't coming to her, and it made her tired to keep trying. She decided to try and read a book. Maybe she could get her cat book out, and try to copy one of the pictures. She could give it to her father; she liked when he made that face, the one she had made when she'd accidentally tasted a vomit-flavoured bean. It was funny. Especially when Calista asked him if he was going to hang it up, and then he usually did, just so she wouldn't feel bad. She wondered if he sat in his office, just making faces at all of the cat pictures, when she wasn't there. She giggled when she imagined it. She wished she could make them meow at him, too.

But now, when Calista tried to leave the embrace of her memories, she found that she couldn't - she stumbled into that familiar golden shield, and then she realised that she must be asleep, because nothing she tried to make her body do was happening. When she tried to tell her eyes to open, her legs to swing over the edge of her bed, she found that it was rather like reaching for the memory of whatever had frightened her; she couldn't quite get there.

Well, this was boring. Did this mean that she couldn't read any new books, couldn't draw any more pictures? and what about school? She was supposed to get her Hogwarts letter very soon, it was nearly her birthday again. That was another thing; ever since she'd discovered that she got to have a birthday  _every_  year, with presents and fun things to do, she found that she always got excited when it was near. What if she kept on sleeping, right through her birthday? Would she miss the chance to get presents? That wouldn't be fair… not that that argument would work on her father, but still.

She combed through the memories she  _did_  have, felt a little pool of happiness well up inside her chest. There she was, making a potion with her father; and then, she had managed to light a fire beneath the cauldron, using just her magic. And there she was, drawing a picture, writing in her journal. She thought about her journal, tried to remember what was written in it. She could picture some of it; she remembered writing about the day that her father had come to rescue her from the orphanage, only at the time she hadn't known that he was her father, or that she was being rescued. But when she tried to picture other pages, she found that the writing blurred before her eyes; she couldn't read the words, but she felt a vague sense of misgiving in the pit of her stomach. It said something bad then, something scary. She stopped trying, frustrated. Why were so many things so hard to think of? Where had all her memories  _gone_?

She went back to the happy ones, spent some time replaying them, trying to feel them again, but it was like reading a book where she didn't understand all the words. She just had this feeling that something was  _missing_ , that she was getting an incomplete picture, and almost none of them felt as happy as they should have. She had a lot of memories of her father coming to her when she had woken up from a bad dream, but she couldn't remember what any of the dreams were about, so it just seemed strange to her that he was being so nice, that she looked so frightened. She watched herself, almost scornfully. What on earth had she been so afraid of, that she couldn't even remember now? Surely it can't have been all that bad.

She prowled through the memories again, looking for something new, something different, something that would give her some clue as to why so much of her mind seemed to have been erased. There was nothing, and now she was very bored. Besides, she hated the hollow, uneasy feeling she had, like something bad had happened, or was about to happen, but since she couldn't remember anything bad, she had no idea which it was, and it made her feel on edge. She wanted to wake up very badly, to go and  _do_  something.

She pushed against the golden shield, hoping that it would help her wake up. It was solid, and it didn't seem to want to let her out. But wait… there was something, a window of sorts. She peered through it eagerly.

It was dark. She saw things floating by, more memories, but they looked scary. She couldn't tell what they were, but she could tell they were  _bad_. When she tried to focus on one through the window in the shield, she felt it tug at the hollow place inside of her, and she realised that what she was looking at were her missing pieces, the memories that she was now unable to recall. If she could only get out there, she thought she could fill all the empty spaces in, and then maybe she would know why she felt so odd, and whether or not she still needed to be afraid. But his could she get out there?

She puzzled at it a little longer, and then realised there was a kind of psychic latch on the window. She reached out for it, and when she touched it, she found that a bubble of emotions burst, flooded her mind. But they weren't her feelings; they belonged to someone she knew very well, someone she felt safe with. They were from her father, she realised, and when they washed over her, she felt even stranger. She felt safe and scared at the same time, because what was encapsulated in that little bubble was something that was far bigger and more complicated than anything else in this little golden cocoon. It was something very powerful, and it filled her with a buzzing sense of energy. It made her want to climb right out of this cocoon and go find her father and give him a big hug, even if it was light out and she felt a little silly, and even if she did think he'd been making up words to tease her.

She reached out, ready to pull the latch open, but then she stopped, noticing that there had been something else inside the little bubble. It was a big knot, made of multi colored strands of thought. She recognised these as her own, and she tugged, unravelling them. Words exploded into her mind, spoken in all different voices, and accompanied by a stream of images.

" _Stupid freak. No one will ever come adopt you."_   _A mousy-haired girl, taller than Calista, stood facing her with her hands on her hips, her face contorted into a mean glare. Calista tried to crawl backwards, but she bumped into a solid wall. She had to pretend that she wasn't scared, or the girl might smell her fear, like an animal. She might hit Calista again, or steal her book. She wished this stupid girl would go away, go be adopted like everyone else, and just leave her alone._

Calista frowned, and she felt a little tiny part of the hollow space inside her get filled. That was one of the bad things, then, that waited for her outside of this little shield. It didn't seem so bad to remember that, especially because Calista knew that  _she_  was the one who had finally been adopted, and she never had to see that Muggle girl or her mean friend again.

_She stood in her room at the orphanage, the one she shared with Jessica and Allison. A tall man was standing in there too, next to stupid Emma, and he was looking at her intently. He had very dark eyes, and he looked scary. Why was he looking at her? Why wouldn't he go away, and ignore her like everyone else did? And then Emma left, and she was all alone with him, and what if he had come here to take her back to…_ and here the memory was blurry; she had been afraid of  _someone_ , but it was part of that hollow place inside her… _she looked up at him, trying her best to look like she wasn't afraid, hoping she could scare him away. And then he spoke to her. "Chloe," he said, and she wanted to laugh at him. That wasn't her name. But then he'd kept talking. "No. I don't think that name suits you. I think you're more of a...Calista." She'd been startled; how could he have known that? No one called her by her real name, anymore._

The next thread of memory reverberated, and it filled in the missing spot in the previous one.

" _Give mama the wand. Pick it up - Give Mama her wand, now!" and she was staring at her mother,_ and as soon as Calista saw this memory, she knew at once who she had been afraid of,  _her eyes flashing dangerously. The wand was near Calista's foot, but she wasn't stupid. She knew what would happen, once her mother had it in her hand again. She'd aim it right at Calista, and it would hurt, it would hurt very badly… or, if she left Calista alone, she'd turn the wand on someone else, make them hurt, or kill them, right in front of her. And Calista was so tired of being hurt, of watching other people be hurt, and she wanted to kick her mother's face as hard as she could, let_ her _see what it felt like to hurt… but her mother was too far away, and too scary besides, so Calista did the next best thing, and kicked the wand away, as far as she could._

Calista shivered, as the memory of her mother slid back under her skin, settled underneath her heart like a cold, venomous snake. It felt slippery, scary, bad to have that memory back, but now some other things made sense. Suddenly, she could understand too well what might have frightened her so many times, why she had been glad for her father's comfort, why she'd felt relief to see him standing in the doorway to her room, wand lit, chasing the shadows to the edges of the room, where they couldn't reach her.

" _Come here, little one," a man was saying, and he held his hand out to her. He was tall, with black hair and the same colour eyes as her mother. "I'll take you somewhere safe, away from_ her _," and he tipped his chin towards her mother, who he had just cast a spell on, a spell that stopped her from moving. He had knocked her mother to the ground, only a moment ago, threatened to kill her, and now he wanted Calista to go with him? Did he think she was stupid? It had to be a trick… he wanted to get her away from her mother so that he could kill her, just as her mother had always said would happen. Or… perhaps it was even worse than that. Perhaps he wanted to take her to the very bad man, Dumbledore. The one that her mother always said would give her to filthy Muggles so they could steal her magic and then cut her up with sharp knives, bigger and sharper than the one her mother had. The man was saying something else to her, but she was too scared to hear him properly. He reached for her, took her wrist, pulled her along with him. Where were they going? She felt her eyes widen with fear; he and the others with him had seemed to be helping the Muggles - maybe he was going to give Calista to them to apologise for what her mother had done, let them kill her for the ones that she had killed of theirs…_

And now more and more of the colours were echoing their words, and vivid images revealed themselves, rushed into her to fill empty spaces.

" _Something's wrong with her,"_   _a pretty, red-haired lady said, sitting next to her at a wooden table. There were other faces around it, too: the black-haired man that had taken her, another black-haired man with spectacles, a sad-eyed man in a worn coat. Calista didn't know any of these people. They weren't Muggles, because they all had wands, but were they going to take her to Muggles? And then one of them said 'Dumbledore', and Calista stared hard at the table top, and wondered how she was going to escape before he came to hurt her, to steal her, just as her mother had warned._

" _Hello, there," a kindly-looking old man said, as he stepped into the kitchen of the house where the black-haired man had taken her, "I'd like to talk to you for a few minutes. My name is Albus Dumbledore…" and Calista hadn't heard what he said after that. She had focused all of her energy on avoiding his gaze, on stilling the rapid pounding of her heart, so he wouldn't see how afraid she was. Maybe if she wished hard enough, she could simply disappear, before he had the chance to hand her over to a mob of angry, vicious Muggles. He kept speaking, but she only caught the end of it, when he asked her if there was anything she wanted them to know, like her name. She shook her head; did he really think she was that stupid? She wasn't going to say a word to him, or to any of them; it worked with her mother, sometimes, made her forget Calista was there, which made Calista overall safer, and she'd decided it was the best course with these people, too, with everyone._

" _It's time," The man Dumbledore was at the house again, and he seemed agitated; everyone seemed agitated. Then Dumbledore told her that Sirius, that was the man that had taken her, was going to bring her somewhere else, and Sirius picked her up and carried her out of the house, and she could feel terror eating away at her insides, because she knew that this, at last, was it. This was what her mother had warned her about. Sirius was taking her to the Muggles, and worse, he was bringing her on some scary, loud_ flying _thing, and she kept thinking that the floor would fall out of the seat she was in, and she would just fall down, down, all the way to the ground. It was very far below. Then, they had landed, and her worst fears were confirmed; they were on a Muggle street, and Sirius was trying to carry her inside; she clawed at him, kicked at him, tried to make him drop her so she could run away, but he was much bigger and stronger than she was, and soon she was inside the building, and there_ were  _a whole lot of Muggles in there, but they didn't cut her up; they only yelled at her and pulled her hair and called her names, the little ones. The big ones, the grown-ups, they pulled her hair too, when they were trying to comb it, and they told her to play with the Muggle children, and she didn't want to, because they were_ mean.

When Calista reached the end of the stream of words and pictures, the end of the little knot of memories that had been bundled together at the window latch, she felt different. She still felt all twisted up and strange inside, but maybe a little bit less hollow than before. She was sure, now, that the hollow feeling came from having memories that were missing, now that she had a few of them back. They weren't happy memories, but they were  _her_  memories, and now that she had them, she could make a little more sense of the memories that were happy. It was like reading a book with half the pages missing, otherwise, like knowing how the characters had resolved the problem without knowing what the problem was. It was… well, it was boring. And it felt incomplete.

But still… seeing these new memories didn't feel very comfortable. It made her squirm and shiver and, sometimes, it made her want to cry. She reflected that it had been easier before she had seen them, although a good deal less interesting, less real. She could see snatches of more memories through the little window, knew that if she opened the window, she'd see all those memories, too, and they probably were not good ones. Did she  _want_  them all, now that she had seen what they might be like?

She considered. Some of the things that had scared her in her memories weren't very scary anymore. Her mother…  _she_  was still scary, but some of the other things? Her father wasn't really scary, except when he was angry, but it wasn't  _real_  scary, because she knew by now that he would never hurt her, or curse her, like her mother did. She thought it was a little bit funny, now, that she had been so afraid of him when he had first shown up at the orphanage. If only she had known what it would be like, living with him… if she could have seen how they would read together, and go on walks, and make potions… and she had birthdays now, and sweets, and a  _cat_.

She had met that Dumbledore man several times now too, and he just didn't seem as scary as her mother had said. Her father was friends with him, which had unnerved her at first, but maybe he had a good reason. Maybe the bit about giving her to Muggles so they could steal her magic hadn't been altogether true, because he'd had plenty of chance to take her, if he wanted to, and bring her to them. So she guessed she could count that memory as one that wasn't so scary anymore, too.

The other girls at the orphanage had been mean to her, but she had gotten adopted before them, and she had all the things they'd said she never would, now. She had a family, and it was even better than just plain being adopted, because she had her  _real_  family. And besides, her father had told her that Muggles don't get to go to Hogwarts, so she would probably never have to see those girls again, so  _that_  wasn't very scary, either.

She supposed there were things that were still bad; now that she had been reminded of her mother, she knew there must be more memories of her, memories where she actually  _had_  done the things that Calista could remember being afraid of, memories where she'd hit her or cursed her, or worse, and that was where Calista hesitated. Maybe… maybe it was safer to stay away from those memories, to just stay here in this little bubble with the things that she did already have. Even though some things didn't scare her much anymore, she knew there were bound to be plenty of things out there, in that dark landscape beyond her shelter, that did.

Well, she didn't have to decide right now, did she? She could look through all of the memories she already had, a few more times, before she made her choice… and that was what she did, she viewed them all again, the good ones and the newly remembered not-so-good ones. And then she came across a recent one, one that she had not been able to see before; maybe taking all those new, scary ones in had somehow unlocked this one, because she was sure it hadn't been there, inside her mind, when she'd looked through them all earlier.

_She was frightened, she was very frightened, and she felt weak and empty. Her mother was here, was hurting her, was trying to… to_ take away her magic _, the very thing that she had warned Calista that others would try to do. But she wasn't alone; her father was here too, and he was going to help her. "I'm going to come back," he had promised, but he had given her something in the meantime, something that made her feel stronger. He'd whispered something in her ear, something that made Calista feel braver. "I love you, Calista," he had said, and she had nearly cried; no one had ever said such a thing to her in her whole life, and she had almost thought that no one ever would. And then he'd said something else; he'd called her "my strong, clever daughter," and the words had lit her up like a star._

She smiled a little, even though the context of that memory wasn't particularly happy. Strong, and clever… she wanted very much to be both of those things, and when he'd said that she was, she had  _felt_  like she was. She had never considered herself strong before; clever, perhaps, at least compared to other children her age at the orphanage, but strong? She, who was afraid of so many things, so many people? Who had, evidently, gotten so frightened by her dreams so regularly? But he knew her better than anyone else did, so if he said she was strong, could it possibly be the truth?

She looked through the window again; she caught a glimpse of her mother's long fingers, reaching for her, in a scrap of memory. She shivered, and retreated further into the shield… but  _no_ , she thought, suddenly. If she stayed here, and hid from her fears and all of the bad things that had happened, she wouldn't be acting strong at all, would she?

And, suddenly, another memory came to her, or maybe it had been with her all along, but she hadn't been ready to see it. She realised that he had once offered to let her forget the bad things, the things that haunted her sleep. She had asked him what he would do, if he were in her place, faced with the same memories and the same decision.

" _I would choose to remember," he had said, "Because knowledge, no matter how awful it is, is power...and there is a kind of strength you can gain only by overcoming terrible things. Some people are lucky, and they never need that strength, nor do they have cause to find it, but I have never been a lucky man, so I would want it, just in case."_

Was she lucky? She knew that, when she was younger, she had not been, knew that even without seeing the majority of her memories from that time… but  _now_ , as she'd already marvelled at, she had a father who was (most of the time) kind to her, a safe place to live, lots of books, birthdays, a cat. That seemed pretty lucky to Calista. But luck was a thing that could come and go, as she knew all too well. Strength… she thought that a person either had strength or they didn't, and if you had it then you could depend on it, on yourself, again and again, no matter what bad things happened to you.

When she thought about it, being strong seemed like a very good thing, even if it had to be learned. She didn't know, truly, if she was strong or not, but she knew that her father thought she was… and she knew that staying here, and hiding, would not be strong of her at all. She didn't want him to second-guess his opinion of her, but more importantly, now that it had occurred to her that strength was a choice that she could make, she didn't see how she could possibly live with herself knowing that she'd decided against it just because it seemed easier.

Calista  _pushed_  out, pushed all of her willpower against the window. For a moment, it strained against her, but then, all at once, it shattered, and when it did, the golden shield broke apart too, melted into wisps and faded away.

There was a jarring, alarming moment when all of the memories around her flooded towards her at once, and she thought she would drown in them; they filled her and filled her and she'd thought, at first, that it was too much, too many, but then she realised that, as they came, image after image and sound after sound, that they were gradually filling in all of the hollow space inside of her.

When she had regained all of the memories, she paused to consider how she felt, now. She felt different, fuller, like she had been only a very good painting of herself before, but now she was whole, real. She did feel a little sadder; and there were a lot of her memories that were very, very frightening, more so even than she had imagined. She had known, from the first memory of her, that her mother was cruel and terrifying, but she hadn't realised how many times her mother had hurt her, how often she had made Calista wish fervently for someone, anyone, to come and rescue her.

But, eventually, someone had. She wondered now if all of those times, when she had wished for it, it had all gotten saved up somehow and then cashed in all at once, because she couldn't think of anyone that would be better. She had gained some more memories of her father, too, when they'd all come flooding back.

She remembered when he first told her that her mother was in wizard prison, in Azkaban. She hadn't believed him, until, frustrated, he'd found the article in the  _Daily Prophet_ , had practically thrown it at her. Well,  _then_ , of course, she'd believed him, and it hadn't been all about the printed column, either. She'd mostly believed him because he'd seemed so  _real_  when he'd thrust the paper at her. He had been visibly irritated, just as she would have been if she was trying to make someone believe something that was true and they just wouldn't, no matter what she said.

She felt a wave of amusement then, as she remembered what else he had said that night. She'd been wondering, only the night before, what he  _did_  all day, when he was out of the flat. She had considered, wildly, the possibility that he used potions to torture and murder people, the way her mother used her wand. And he must have known, because he'd growled at her,  _"By the way, I'm a professor. That's what I do all day. I teach children to brew potions… and, curiously, none of them are as frightened of me as you are, even though I have far less patience for them than I have for you. And if I wanted to poison you, don't you think I would have done so by now?"_

And when he said it, of course it made sense, but more importantly, he had seemed so genuine, and that was when Calista had finally begun to relax around him a little bit. It was just… when he'd been so patient and kind, all the time, until then, it had seemed so strange and forced, and she'd wondered what he was really hiding. And then, when he was frustrated, he'd finally seemed like he was being himself, and that put Calista at ease.

Of course she liked it when he was kind, but, well, she also liked it when he was snappish and sarcastic, as long as he wasn't truly angry with her (and she could always tell the difference, now). She liked their back-and-forth half-serious bickering, because even though it was annoying, sometimes, it was also almost always  _funny_. She couldn't remember ever laughing before she'd met him, but she supposed she must have, sometime… but he made her laugh all the time, and it was even better when he wasn't even trying to, like when she'd asked him to read from her cat book and he'd made that  _face_. She liked that memory so much, found it so amusing, that she seriously considered asking him to read it again, tonight…

And look at that; even though she had absorbed the rest of her memories, even though a lot of them were scary and sad, what was she doing now? She was looking  _forward_  to something, to making more memories. Of course she was afraid of a lot of things, but she'd been afraid many times before, and she'd always gotten through it, somehow. Not always alone, that was true; but she didn't  _have_  to be alone. She had someone who cared about her, who  _loved_  her even, who thought that she was clever and strong. Someone who had promised her, once, that he would protect her if Bellatrix ever came back for her… and now that she had her memories back, she knew that he had been as good as his word.

She pulled herself from her thoughts to look around the landscape of her mind, and she was surprised to see that, in the time she had been absorbed in recollecting and analysing her memories, it had changed. Where before there had been gaping holes and grasping shadows, now there were bright, strong threads, reweaving themselves into the pattern of her mind, repairing the damage that had seemed so unsurmountable before. Even now, she could see the loose ends of her thoughts working themselves in and out of her memories, reshaping what had been lost.

She cast about, for any memories that might still be lost to her; she felt, somewhere deep in her core, a tiny pinhole, a place where something had been lost, but when she searched, there was nothing to fill in the gap, no memories that came rushing in, no thread of recollection that neatly filled the gap. It felt, for a moment, uncomfortable, hollow. But then, it was a very small hole, and the rest of her felt solid and real. And bored. And she knew then that she had waited long enough, that she had allowed herself enough time.

She concentrated, very hard. It was time to wake up now, time to begin a new day, to weave new memories. And it was time to give her father a big, huge hug, even if it made her feel embarrassed and silly.

With great effort, Calista concentrated on freeing herself from the web of her thoughts, the burden of contemplating her memories. She focused on waking up.

In the hospital wing of Hogwarts, on her bed nestled between two crisp white curtains, Calista opened her eyes.

**(¯ˆ·.¸¸.·ˆ¯)**

On the first day after he had successfully evacuated Bellatrix from his daughter's mind, Severus had gone to sleep, to recover; his energy had been drained, for a second time, but he knew that he'd done the best he could, for Calista.

On the second day and the third day, he had stayed by her side almost obsessively; Dumbledore had found a substitute for his classes, and he'd sat with her, mentally willing her to wake up, to make the same decision he'd once told her he would have made. Logically, he knew that she had a lot of repair to see to in her mind, even if she did choose the way he thought she would, that she couldn't wake up until she had done so; but still, it was difficult, to wait. With each passing hour, he thought it was less and less likely that she'd decided to face the pain of her memories, that she'd chosen to remember, even though he knew that they still hadn't passed the critical mark. If it got to a week, and she still hadn't surfaced, then he would know that the odds weren't good; if her psychic core was disconnected from the mainframe of her mind for that long, it would begin to deteriorate irreparably, and she might never be able to come back, even if she wanted to.

He spent days two and three reading to her from books they'd enjoyed together from before, and talking to her about things they'd done together, conversations they'd had. He didn't think she could hear him, but it made him feel better to talk to her, anyway. He told her that he'd fed her cat, even though he hadn't wanted to; if she was in there somewhere, if she could hear him, surely that would entice her to return, wouldn't it? She loved that mangy furball nearly as much as he despised it, and he'd been sorely tempted to let it 'accidentally' escape from the castle while she was in the hospital wing, but he hadn't.

On the fourth day, he thought he would go mad, but he didn't quite have the presence of mind to return to teaching, not when she was in such a precarious limbo. He went home that day, to Spinner's End.

He didn't spend much time there; usually only a few hours here or there, since he had taken custody of Calista. He didn't want to bring her there, not when the place held so many difficult memories for him. His own childhood there had been, if not quite as traumatic as Calista's, certainly dismal. He couldn't quite look at his own living room rug, for instance, without seeing the dark stain of spilled whiskey on it, without feeling his own father's fingers coming round his throat, without hearing the drunken rasp of breath that meant an argument was coming… but he wasn't going to think about that, not now, when his own child was in a hospital bed. He was afraid that thinking negative thoughts would jink her somehow, even though that didn't really make sense. She would decide to break free from the shield, or she wouldn't. Nothing he did  _now_  would make a difference.

Still, there were things to attend to, at the house. He cleaned, removed a dust bunny colony, considered, not for the first time, the possibility of upgrading the plumbing. He sorted through some old books and papers, scrubbed all of the surfaces he could see, just to keep busy.

He knew that Dumbledore wanted Calista to leave Hogwarts for the summer, to provide a notion of separation between her early childhood and the beginning of her wizarding schooling, but he was loathe to bring her here. This place had dark memories, and a feeling that was just shy of dismal; he knew that the two of them would continue to create new memories, to grow closer (if she woke up), but somehow, he didn't want to do it  _here_. He wanted to give them a fresh start; one with more windows, and fewer ghosts. He decided that he would look for a new flat for them to live in, somewhere she could heal, somewhere neither of them would feel haunted. If she woke up.

He returned to Hogwarts, exhausted from his day of cleaning and sorting. It wasn't purely physical; there was an emotional fatigue that came with facing the memories he had in that place, and it was taking its toll on him. He thought, as he walked through the front gates and towards the castle entrance, that perhaps he would go straight to bed when he got in. And that was when he was met in the entrance hall, by a very cheerful-looking mediwitch.

"Severus!" Poppy said, brightly, "Albus thought I'd find you here. Calista's awake, and she's asking for you."

He barely remembered to thank her, as he raced towards the hospital wing, exhaustion all but forgotten. He took the stairs three at a time, and by the time he arrived, was out of breath; and even if he hadn't been, he had it nearly knocked out of him, as soon as he opened the door.

A not-so-small dark-haired blur raced at him, collided with him. She wrapped skinny arms around his middle.

"I love you too," Calista said, looking up at him with dark eyes that were still, startlingly, like looking into a mirror. "Please, can we read my cat book tonight?"

"You miserable little wretch," he choked out, affectionately, "Of course we can."


	17. "Like calls to like" - End

The day after Calista woke up, Severus returned to his classes, while she stayed in their dungeon flat. He noted, with mild annoyance, that whoever had substituted for him had not assigned any homework, and he doubled up on it to make up for lost time. His students were not particularly excited, but then, they had been spoiled for nearly a week, and it was high time they were expected to work again.

As far as Severus could tell, Calista had returned very nearly to her old self. She was a little quieter than usual, the first couple of days, but her mind was still repairing itself, and that didn't worry him, so long as her eyes looked clear and familiar. Perhaps a bit unfortunately, returning to her old self meant that, after her initial burst of affection for him, she became a bit more standoffish again. She hadn't said those three words again since that first time, but then again, neither had he. Perhaps they didn't need to… or perhaps they should have, but both of them were too surly and emotionally hesitant to initiate it.

They returned to the familiar pattern of eating meals together, and reading books together. She still insisted on having him read from  _Advanced Magical Theory_ , which was ridiculous, because he could  _see_  her eyes glazing over whenever they did. It was a very dry text, and well beyond the range of what Calista could possibly hope to understand, and he had no idea what she liked about it.

They were in his office one day, he marking essays and she writing in her journal. It wasn't the same journal, though. Curiously, after their psychic battle with Bellatrix, blank pages had stopped appearing in Calista's journal. She'd told him that she could still read what was already there, but there wasn't room to write anymore. Her birthday had come shortly after that though, and he'd bought her a new one, a larger, hard backed one with a yellow cover and gilt-edged pages. It wasn't enchanted in any way, but she seemed to like it. She had it now, balanced on her knees, which were drawn up onto the seat of the extra chair in his office, and she scrawled a quill across the pages, making an even, scratching rhythm.

She paused, and the sound of the quill paused with her. He glanced up; she was looking thoughtfully around at his office walls, hung with a dozen or more of her drawings, all but one of them cats. The odd one out was a stick figure that he supposed was meant to be him, wearing a cloak and stirring a cauldron.

"You have to take these down," she said, "Before I start school."

Since her birthday, when she'd gotten her Hogwarts letter, she'd started nearly every conversation with the word "school". That, combined with the fact that he'd caught her waving a quill around and pretending it was a wand last week, gave him the distinct impression that she was excited about it.

"I was thinking I would hand them out to everyone, during your first Potions class," he said, sounding serious.

"You're either joking, or you're a murderer," she said, "Because if you did that, I would die from embarrassment."

_Murderer._  Why did the word, even still, even when it was used in a joking fashion, always give him an uneasy twist in his gut?

"I'll take them down," he said, "When we leave for the summer."

"Leave?" She set the quill into the binding of her new journal, and closed the cover, still balancing it on her knees. "What are you talking about?"

"The Headmaster wants you to spend the summer away from the castle. Students aren't allowed to stay over the summer."

He could  _see_  her disappointment at having to leave temporarily warring with her excitement at being called a student. "Where are we going to go, then?" she finally asked.

"I'm working on a few things," he said, "We'll rent something for the summer."

"We could live in Hogsmeade," she said, hopefully, "And I could walk to the pet store every day."

Severus let out a delicate snort. "If you're paying, for the rent and for all the mangy little beasts you're likely to drag home."

"Yellow is not a  _beast_ ," she said, defensively.

"I would beg to differ, both from a zoological standpoint, and from a personal one," he said drily.

"I don't know why you hate Yellow so much. He likes you."

"Oh, is that so? I'm not sure I've ever known anyone to show affection by stealing my socks and growling at me from under the table - ah, actually, I suppose he could have learned the second one from you."

"Excuse me? You know full well I only growl at you from  _across_  the table, not under it."

"Semantics," he said. She made a face, and opened her journal, picking up the quill again.

Severus watched her wordlessly for several moments. They hadn't discussed what it had been like, for her to decide to remember after all, but he knew that it must have been difficult, to relive them, relearn them, all at once. He had tried, once or twice, to broach the subject, but she never wanted to talk about it. Of course, he knew that she hadn't quite regained all of her memories, but if she felt their loss, she hadn't said so.

Some day, he knew she would find the scars on her back, and ask about them. He would have to think of something to tell her, something that wouldn't require him to lie outright to her, or to return the missing memories too early, before she was equipped to defend against Bellatrix. He'd risked asking Poppy if they could be removed, when Calista was in the hospital wing; whether or not the mediwitch recognized the pattern they made, she  _had_  recognized that they couldn't be healed away, through Muggle or magical means. That, of course, meant that Bellatrix had used some kind of Dark magic in making them, but whatever it was hadn't been in Calista's memory of their origins; but then, she had had her face pressed into a sofa cushion for most of it, and had been trying to disassociate from it, so it was no surprise that her memory wasn't clear.

Losing those particular memories had seemed to help her. She still had nightmares, but they were back down to perhaps one in a month, and they didn't seem to be quite so intense. He still felt a jolt of alarm in his own mind when she was caught up in one, but when he went to her room to check on her, he could wake her up fairly easily, and she seemed to realise where she was and who he was almost immediately; sometimes her heart would be racing and she would be afraid to go back to sleep right away, but there had been no more frightening panic attacks, no more instances where he was afraid she might hyperventilate. She seemed marginally less shy, too; she'd spoken to Dumbledore, briefly but politely, once or twice, and she had met the gamekeeper Hagrid on one of their walks, and managed a stuttering "er, hello"  _before_  scurrying behind Severus to hide. At least Hagrid had taken it well; he'd seemed more amused than anything else.

Still, he had to wonder if she was ready to begin at Hogwarts as a student. Academically, of course, she would do fine, would even begin with an advantage in Potions, but it would represent a lot of changes for her that he wasn't entirely sure she was ready for. She would be sleeping somewhere new, with roommates her own age. The last time that had happened, it had been in the orphanage; he hoped it didn't bring up too many memories of that for her. She would be constantly surrounded by her peers as well, and would have to learn how to get along with them. In general, she'd need to get used to speaking with people that weren't him, because she'd be expected to contribute in class, and she'd never make friends if she didn't talk to the other students. Perhaps, once she was Sorted into one of the houses, she would find something in common with the other students, and even make some friends; he could hope so, anyway. He didn't want her to be lonely, like he had often felt.

There were other, smaller things, too. If she had a nightmare, he wouldn't be next door, able to come and comfort her. And she still wasn't very good about remembering to comb her hair; every few weeks he had to cast a detangling spell. She didn't seem to care much about her appearance, but he was afraid some of the other students might tease her. And then, there was the fact that if she  _did_  speak to other people, she was more likely to argue with them than anything else. Maybe he could try to socialise her more over the summer, find a neighborhood for them to stay in with other children around. Of course, the downside of that was living in a neighborhood with children around… it would be nearly as annoying as living near a pet store, actually.

He frowned, and returned to marking essays. He would figure this all out later. For now, he was just glad that she was here, and more or less back to normal. Everything else, they could work on.

**(¯ˆ·.¸¸.·ˆ¯)**

When the weather warmed, Severus took advantage of the first Saturday without rain to take Calista for a walk outside. It was difficult to imagine that in a few months, she would have the same free reign of the castle and grounds as the rest of the first years; it suddenly struck him that eleven seemed awfully young to be allowed to roam at will. Of course there were certain place she couldn't go, but those were easy to figure out - the Forbidden Forest, the Restricted section of the library… whether or not going there was allowed was in the name of the place. Perhaps all the eleven-year-olds were the reason why, he thought.

They walked by the greenhouses. "You'll have Herbology class in there," he told her.

"Why do I have to learn how to grow things? Isn't that what the apothe-whatsit is for?"

"And how do you think the people that stock the apothecary know how to grow things?"

"I would rather just take Potions," she said, "And Defence Against the Dark Arts, of course. I guess Transfiguration, too. Not Herbology, not History of Magic. What else is there?"

"You'll have to take all five of those classes for at least five years," he said, "As well as Charms and Astronomy. Oh, and Flying lessons."

" _What?!"_  She looked up at him, eyes round. "No way. I'm not taking Flying."

"Really? You don't want to? All of the other first-years seem to like it."

"Well, they're all stupid, then. I  _hate_  flying. I won't do it."

"How do you know if you like it or not? Have you ever flown?" In truth, he thought he was going to catch her in an assumption she'd made without any information. He expected her to say that no, she hadn't tried it, but she surprised him.

" _Yes_ , and I hated it. That man, the one that took me to the house I was at before the orphanage, he made me fly in this… this big  _thing_ , way way up high."

Severus was doubly surprised now, because she had never said much about her life before living with him, except to speak, fairly obliquely, about the contents of her nightmares directly following them.

"Who?" He asked, curious.

"I don't remember his name." She wrinkled her nose. "But he said he was related to  _her_. He… didn't seem to like her much, though."

"Sirius Black," he sneered, and now he remembered that Dumbledore had told him he was the one to take her from Bellatrix.

She nodded. The greenhouses were slowly disappearing from view. "I think that was it." There was a pause of perhaps two paces, and then: "I hated him, and his stupid flying thing. I scratched his face up when he brought me to the orphanage, and I'll scratch up someone else's face if they make me fly again!"

Her face was screwed up in intense frustration; he believed her. He was perversely glad to hear that she had hated Sirius Black, one of his chief tormentors… and glad, also, that she had scratched him. He hoped it left a scar. The fact that she had scratched  _him_  a time or two, after a nightmare, seemed irrelevant in the present moment.

Severus had an idea, then. He hadn't yet broached the topic of Occlumency lessons. He wasn't certain if she would like the idea or not, and it would be a burden on top of an already full standard course load, but the solution seemed obvious, now.

"How about another bargain, then?"

"Only if it's a bargain where I don't have to take flying lessons," she said.

"I can't promise anything, but I may be able to have your flying lessons put off for a year or two, if you were to take another class instead."

"What kind of class?" she asked, suspiciously.

"Occlumency," he said, "The Headmaster and I both believe it would be beneficial for you to learn to block your mind from, ah,  _unwelcome_  intrusions."

"Will you teach it to me, or someone else?"

"I will," he said, glancing down at her. "Is that a problem?" he added, testily.

"Okay," she said.

"Okay?"

She nodded, skirting a muddy patch on the ground. "It's a deal. As long as you're the one to teach me. And the flying lessons are delayed until never."

"That isn't what I said."

"No, but it's what  _I_  said."

"When has that made a difference?"

"First time for everything?" she said hopefully.

"Perhaps, but this isn't it. I can try to have them delayed until your second year, possibly your third year at best. And the Occlumency lessons aren't really a choice, so I suggest you accept the deal the way it is, or you'll find yourself trying to guard your mind from atop a broomstick."

"I can't wait until  _I'm_  the adult," she said, grumpily, "So I can decide things."

"Ah, if that's what you're looking forward to, I'm afraid you'll be sorely disappointed. You'll 'decide' based on your responsibilities. Actual options tend to exist only in theory."

"Maybe for you," she said, "But  _I'll_  decide everything based on what I feel like doing. I'll never fly, because I don't feel like it. I'll never go to bed, either, I'll just stay up all night forever. Because I feel like it."

"Good luck with that," he remarked, "Just curious - what will you do while you're awake all night?"

"Read books," she said, "And make potions."

He laughed. "You're the worst sort of rebel," he teased.

"Isn't that what you do, when you get to stay up later than me?"

"Sadly, not usually. Most of the time, I have work to do… essays to mark, lesson plans to prepare, things like that."

"I would just decide not to do all that junk," she said.

"And your employer would decide not to pay you."

"Do I have to get a job?" she asked, "It sounds boring."

"The idea is to find a job that isn't boring to you, but I'm afraid you will have no choice but to get one, some day. Unless you want me to turn you into a hippogriff after all, so you can live outside?"

"Can't I just live with you forever?"

He smirked. "Some day, perhaps five or ten years from now, I'm going to remind you that you once asked me that."

"I'll remember," she said.

"I highly doubt that. In any case, if you still want to live with me forever when you're, oh, say, twenty years old, I'll consider it, under certain  _conditions_."

"What kind of conditions? And can I go swimming?" She added, as they approached the lake.

"You absolutely cannot go swimming, which you full well know. As for conditions… hm, well, for starters, no boyfriends until you're thirty."

"Why can't I be friends with boys?" she asked innocently. He did a double-take; she appeared sincere.

"Ah, that's not what I meant. Of course you can be friends with boys."

"But you just said I couldn't. You said 'no boy friends'."

"That's not - you know what? Never mind. We'll discuss the conditions if it ever comes up." If she really didn't know what he meant, he certainly wasn't going to augment her limited knowledge.

"Er, okay." She paused, by the edge of the lake, and nudged a stone forward with the toe of her trainer, so it rolled into the water. "Now can I go swimming?"

Severus rolled his eyes, and grabbed her hand, pulling her away from the lake. "Do you really think that if you pester me enough times I'll change my mind?"

"Not really," she said, cheerfully. She didn't offer any explanation as to why she kept asking, anyway, just walked with him, content for now to have her hand held firmly in his larger one, as they walked away from the lake, Giant Squid and all.

**(¯ˆ·.¸¸.·ˆ¯)**

Severus actually began teaching Calista Occlumency before the summer even began. She actually seemed eager to learn, although Severus wasn't certain how much of her enthusiasm was directly related to interest in the subject, and how much of it was a fervent desire to keep Bellatrix out of her mind. In either case, she certainly proved a willing student, if not always a very adept one.

She tried hard, but conscious mastery of occlumency was a different thing entirely from subconscious, involuntary use of it as a form of instinctive protection. Just as a child might experience a timely burst of uncontrolled magic but be unable to perform the same magic deliberately for years yet, Calista was having a difficult time focusing on protecting her mind, though she had been able to do so, at least somewhat, back before she had trusted Severus.

Eventually, it became clear that she wasn't going to be able to draw from her magical potential to conjure a mental shield through his explanations alone, at least not yet; but it was important that she start training early, in light of what had already happened.

He warned her that he was going to use legilimency, but promised to try not to read her thoughts, and then he sent a tendril from his own mind into hers. He could see, immediately, that her mind had changed considerably from what it had been like both times that he had entered it.

The first time, her conscious mind had been a mess, a swirling, disorganised chorus of words and images caught up in a frenzied current, with her psychic core set solidly in the center of it, partially disengaged from her conscious mind; the disengagement, disassociation, whatever one wanted to call it, was symptomatic of the trauma she had seen in her young life. It didn't mean, had never meant, that her mind had to exist in that state forever, but it had meant that, at the time, she had been psychologically trying to distance herself from those memories, to deny them ever having happened in a sense. It was a completely normal and expected reaction, especially for a child, but it meant that she could not process them, and thus not fully heal beyond them.

Then, later, her mind had been under attack, and the threads that quite literally held her up and out of the pit of madness had been slowly dissolving. Her psychic core had been little more than a shade of who she really was, weakened by the battle and unable to do more than survive, and even that had been a struggle, towards the end. There could be no processing, no healing, when her mind was striving only towards staying intact.

Now, it was unlike either of those things. It felt familiar, for reasons besides simply belonging to his daughter. It was closer to the way he was used to seeing minds, as a sort of complex spiral where words, images, memories, emotions, impressions, and a host of other components meandered, darting between chambers and passages. It was not quite as labyrinthine or as sophisticated as the mind of an adult, but it was not difficult to imagine how it could develop that way, some day.

As for her core… threads from it wove themselves in and out of the very walls and floors of the spiral, and memories good and bad coexisted in a fragile balance. He could tell, immediately, that her mind was stronger already, would, simply by nature of having her core, her soul, joined to it so seamlessly, be more difficult to infiltrate. Only one thing was missing; there was no sign of the vicious sea that had once lapped at the structure of her mind, willing it to crumble away. He had told her he wouldn't read her thoughts, but he had to know what had caused this drastic change in her mind, over the course of only a few months.

She was not a different child now than she had been then, and he was not fool enough to think that a few more months of relative happiness would do what nearly five years had only begun, which left only one thing: the missing memories. He had known all along, since the first time he saw inside her mind, that the memory of how she had gotten the scars on her back were by far her darkest, the ones that caused her the most pain and distress, and all of the newer memories that referenced it, the nightmares upon nightmares, and that final, ultimate one, where Bellatrix had exploited her mounting vulnerability to take control of her mind, had been eating away at the structure of her mind all along.

Which all added up to mean that he had been right all along, years ago, when he had told Dumbledore that he didn't think she could fully heal, could learn to truly trust, without the removal of those particular memories. It seemed logical to conclude, now, that the particulars of that memory had simply been too much for her to process. But knowing that didn't make him feel relief; there was no guarantee that she would ever be strong enough to process them, and yet he knew that someday, she would have to.

Although he had told her the truth when he'd said that a certain sort of strength could only be earned by overcoming terrible things, he knew that it was far from the only sort of strength that one could attain. It was neither romantic or terribly exciting, but there was no denying that it could be effective. It was the same strength, in its simplest form, as the strength one gains from repeated exercise, from a daily run that grew just steps longer each day, each week. It was the strength of practise.

He listened for a familiar hum, a warm vibration, along the walls and tapestries that made up the shell of her mind, touched it with his own psychic tendril.

_This_ , he thought, in her mind.  _Can you feel the potential, the magic, that hums in your blood, in your mind?_

He could feel her concentrating, and then, weakly, a thin fog of the lively, buzzing magic began to seep out of the walls.

_Precisely,_  he encouraged her, and then he took hold of a wispy tendril of the fog, showed her how to pull it up and around the exterior of her mind. It created little more than a translucent curtain, but it was a start.  _Try and draw more power into it._

He could feel her mind searing with effort, as if it were something she were trying to wrench free from her very marrow. He touched his own thread of thought gently to the gossamer curtain he'd helped her create.

_Like calls to like_ , he said,  _Stop trying to pull all of your magic out, drop by drop, and instead let what you have here already summon the rest for you._

She shifted her concentration, focused on the shimmery fog, attempted only to thicken it. It worked, slowly. He extended another tendril of his own thought, another and another, and wove them carefully through the wisps of her own cloudy, delicate barrier, showing her how to build a barrier, combining her thoughts, emotions, and magic. When it resembled a thin, rudimentary wall, he carefully withdrew his own thoughts, keeping them only far enough into her mind to see what she did next.

Slowly, he saw her threads of thought, tendrils of magical potential, weave themselves into the spaces he had left in the flimsy wall. She held it, and though he could have broken through it in a matter of seconds, he didn't. This first lesson was only to show her how to begin to construct her defences, to show her which parts of the mind she needed to draw from for protection.

_Not a bad start,_  he told her, mentally. And then, he withdrew from her mind, spoke to her out loud.

"Every time you create a barrier like this, try to make it a little stronger than the last time. The more you practise putting up, the quicker it will be to build. Eventually, you won't need to concentrate on building it; the blueprint will fix itself in your mind, and you'll only need to call on that memory to erect the barrier."

"This is… really hard," she said, her face screwed up with concentration.

"You're not used to using your mind this way, not consciously. It will get easier the more you practise."

"Are you sure?"

"Positive. I won't be surprised if you can put up a wall, just like that, in only a matter of seconds, by the end of the summer."

" _I'd_ be surprised," she muttered, shaking her head.

They practised, every day after that, he approaching the edge of her mind, just far enough in to see how she built the wall. For the first month, it took her ten or fifteen minutes, a painstaking process of mentally weaving, stacking, mortaring thoughts and memories together, using her newfound magical potential as a binding agent.

And then, by the beginning of summer, she had the process down to perhaps five minutes, and the wall had grown a bit stronger as well.

They practised, taking only one day off, while they moved into a flat on the first floor of a semi-detached home in a nice neighborhood in South London. It had two bedrooms, both with windows, and a shared garden with the ground floor tenants. it belonged to an elderly couple who summered with their son and his wife and small children, in Portugal, and so it came fully furnished. Some of the furnishings were a bit fussy, but it was affordable, since it only needed to be leased three months out of the year.

It was in a neighborhood where they could easily walk to the high street, and there were a few other children living in close proximity; it wasn't near a pet store, thankfully, and so it met all of Severus' requirements. He decided that he and Calista would both remain at Hogwarts over the Christmas and Easter holidays, at least for now. Perhaps, sometime, he would bring her to Spinner's End, but it was where his old, unsavoury acquaintances were likely to seek him out, if they did, and it seemed practical to keep her away from them until she was strong enough to guard her mind, just in case - not only for the sake of her own secrets, but for his, as well.

Besides, the new flat felt like a fresh start, for both of them - it was well-lit, and there were flowers growing at the edge of the garden, and it was a fenced garden as well, so Calista could play outside with her cat without fear of it running away (although Severus secretly rather hoped it would find a way, anyhow).

She didn't play much with the other children; she was still shy, and given her personality, it often came off as being plain rude. Still, there were a few times when she and the two children that lived on the ground floor would all be in the garden at the same time, and they warily tolerated each other, which he supposed was better than she had ever gotten on with anyone besides himself, anyway.

There did come a day, as Severus and Calista sat across from each other at the kitchen table after lunch, when he probed the surface of her mind, and her flimsy, translucent barrier went up in a few scant seconds. When that happened - when he slipped into the very outer part of her mind, and saw the delicate barrier go up nearly immediately, he smiled.

"Ah, what did I tell you? That was four seconds at the very most; and do you know what day it is? It's only the ninth of August. Not even the end of summer."

She grinned back at him, a rare, full-wattage smile. "I did it."

"You did," he agreed, "Which means that now we can work on strengthening it, to block an attack."

"You're such a  _Professor_ ," she said sourly, "It's always on to the next lesson with you."

"I'm going to decide to take that as a compliment," he said, mirroring a conversation they'd had once, years ago, on one of their walks.

_You're insufferable_ , he'd told her, a little bit annoyed, but a bit more amused.

She'd admitted to not knowing the word, and then said,  _but I'm going to take it as a nice thing._

Secretly, he had meant it that way anyway, but he hadn't let on.

_You would_ , he'd said, but he hadn't been able to hide a small smile.

Calista snorted now, rolled her eyes theatrically.

"You would," she said.

 


End file.
